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.

The Spartacus Factor: How Wikipedia's Pro-Hamas Editors Control Articles

Very few established Wikipedia editors want to be Spartacus.

Recently I received an email from a longtime former Wikipedia editor. I'm taking the liberty of replicating a passage from their email, redacted to ensure their anonymity:

I'm actually a former editor of Wikipedia. . .  After discovering the anti-Israel activity, I had multiple negative encounters with the propagandists you write about, most notably [redacted], and arguing with these people was driving me crazy, plus the fact that they seem to have unlimited time and energy, and the ability to get - and get away with - whatever they want. I realized I was up against an immovable evil, so I left the entire project, for my own sake. I definitely don't have the mental energy to do what you're doing!

Note the text that I've put in italic boldface, as I think it is crucial. 

I thought of that email when I read Ashley Rindsberg's well-researched, exhaustively documented article that just came out in an online journal called the Pirate Wires. Ashley, author of an excellent book on the New York Times, has written other articles about Wikipedia, and it is a superlative website, well worth a subscription. His work on Wikipedia is right up there with Aaron Bandler of the Jewish Journal, who has been all over the story of Wikipedia's gross anti-Israel bias for months.

What made Ashley's article especially valuable is how he delves into and quantifies the techniques used by what I call the Wikipedia Flood—the well-coordinated coterie of anti-Zionist and sometimes antisemitic editors who control every single article that has anything to do with Israel, even remotely. 

Opponents of the Flood are overwhelmed, exhausted, and ultimately worn out because the pro-Hamas editors effectively "game" Wikipedia's arbitrarily enforced, often unenforced policies. Ashley points out:

To evade detection, the group works in pairs or trios, an approach that veils them from detection. They also appear to rotate their groupings for the same reason. Likewise, one or more of the group’s editors can come to the aid of another in the case of pushback. In many instances, editing by the group is made to articles focused on historical issues, where a single editor might be patrolling for this kind of abuse, making it easy for two dedicated users to overwhelm or exhaust the lone editor.

Yes, "lone editors" like the one I quoted at the top of this post.

The Flood consists of many editors, but Ashley documents how it comes down to a hard core of 40 experienced editors.  Experienced editors are held in high regard by Wikipedia. When acting in concert, they invariably get their way when they are persistent, motivated, ideologically single-minded and well-organized.

Ashley describes how that works, with charts identifying the editors in questions, all familiar names to readers of this blog.

To skirt [Wikipedia polices], the pro-Palestine group leverages deep Wikipedia know-how to coordinate efforts without raising red flags. They work in small clusters, with only two or three active in the same article at any given time. On their own, many of these edits appear minor, even trivial. But together, their scope is staggering, with two million edits made to more than 10,000 articles, a majority of which are PIA or topically associated. In dozens of cases, the group’s edits account for upwards of 90% of the content on an article, giving them complete control of the topics.

The numbers are indeed staggering:

In August, an analysis of the intensity of editing in PIA between January 2022 and September 2024 found that the top contributor to PIA by number of edits, a user called Selfstudier, made over 15,000 edits in the space in that period. Iskandar323 contributed over 12,000 edits to PIA articles in the same period. Other members of the pro-Palestine group are equally prolific, with top contributors including CarmenEsparzaAmoux (8,353), Makeandtoss (8,074), Nableezy (6,414), Nishidani (5,879), Onceinawhile (4,760) and an admin called Zero0000 (2,561).

. . . . All together, the top 20 editors of this group made over 850,000 edits to more than 10,500 articles, the majority of them in the Palestine-Israel topic area, or topically connected historical articles.

These astonishing numbers quantify why when you see the "talk" pages of article there is either no dissent at all to their "POV-pushing," or when there is dissent it is isolated and ineffective, a case of one editor is up against many. 

That's no accident. As Ashley points out, and as I have documented, they "swarm" over articles due to offsite "canvassing." That is against Wikipedia rules, like everything else they do, but is unenforceable when it takes place offsite.

Sure you can fight them. But that can end your Wikipedia career or get you kicked out of the topic area. By coordinating their actions offsite, the Wikipedia Flood is able to gin up a "consensus" whenever they so desire. Fighting them means that you are against "consensus," which means that you are being "disruptive." Fight too hard, refuse to surrender to the Flood, and you get blocked or banned from the topic area entirely.

It's a numbers game, as I have said over and over again in this blog. 

It's a bit like Spartacus and his small band of slave rebels. Remember what happened to Spartacus? He and his band were overwhelmed by the Roman legions. It made for a great Kirk Douglas movie, but remember how it ends, with everyone crucified on the road to Rome? Every single one dead.

No experienced editor wants to be Spartacus. They like editing Wikipedia. They enjoy it. Maybe there is another area of interest that holds their interest. Maybe they are beekeepers or mainly focused on editing articles about their hobbies or their hometowns. I guarantee you that it is much more satisfying to edit in an area where other editors are pleasant and cooperative than editing in a topic where the other editors would happy if you burned to death in real life.

To avoid that fate, editors drop out of Wikipedia entirely or, more commonly, stop editing in what is known on Wikipedia as the "Palestine/Israel" topic area. 

The same desire to avoid unnecessary conflict, expenditure of energy and fatigue results in the vast majority of Wikipedia's volunteer "administrators" avoiding the subject area—except, in almost all cases, for administrators who back up the Wikipedia Flood. As I've described, one admin, "Vallereee," improperly uses her administrative tools on behalf of the Flood.

That same conflict-avoidance imperative has resulted in the Wikipedia "Arbitration Committee" showing extreme reluctance in tackling the issue. Same reason: they are volunteers, they have other things to do, and life is short.

One "arbcom" case involving the same pro-Hamas editors mentioned in Ashley's article has been dragging on since August without resolution. In fighting that case, the Flood has used the same "swarming" tactics they've used in getting their way throughout Wikipedia.

Read Ashley's article for more. And be sure to follow Aaron Bandler's great work in the Jewish Journal. They are the only journalists who are following this story closely. Hopefully there will be more.