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| Mainstream Jewish reaction to Khalil takes a back seat |
At every major anti-Israel and antisemitic demonstration since Oct. 7, pro-Hamas crazies have put fringe, self-hating "Jewish" tokens on prominent display.
It's how they fend off accusations of antisemitism. "How can we be antisemitic? Look at all our pet Jews!" The strategy works just fine with sympathetic journalists.
I haven't surveyed media coverage, but the Hamas strategy is working just fine on Wikipedia, which has created a typically slanted article on Mahmoud Khalil, the pro-Hamas activist the Trump Administration is seeking to deport.
A prominent subsection is set aside for "Reactions," and Jewish groups are given prominent play. But not actual Jewish groups representing the majority of Jews, but rather tiny, pro-Hamas front groups like Jewish Voice For Peace, IfNotNow, and, bizarrely, the Putin stooge Jill Stein.
An incomplete list of non-fringe groups supporting the move, like the ADL, is shoved off at the very end.
There are two principal takeaways from this ongoing propaganda fest, and they are deeply discouraging:
1. This article is an example of Wikipedia's ingrained anti-Israel and antisemitic bias, but it was not a product of what I call the "Wikipedia Flood," the small but productive coterie of pro-Hamas editors. The editor who created the article, "Francisdpas89" is a new editor who started out the article in a perfectly inoffensive manner.
2. After the article was created, the article was slanted in a team effort by a bunch of editors I've never heard of. In other words, it was not a product of the "Flood." It is just a good example of how Wikipedia works every day. If I'm mistaken, someone should bring that to my attention, but I'm not seeing a small group of activists at work here, just a large number of editors for who would never dream of tokenizing any minority group but Jews.
That's what people don't understand about Wikipedia. It is a group effort. Responsibility is diffused, accountability is nonexistent. Efforts to take a top-down approach, such as by writing letters of complaint to the Wikimedia Foundation or bringing cases at "Arbcom," are doomed to failure. Efforts to pitch in and edit are doomed to failure as well, because then the editors will get sandbagged by anti-Israel and antisemitic administrators and editors.
So what can one do about this kind of thing? A lot, but it takes work.
As I've said before, the only way to deal with Wikipedia is to defund it, to end Section 230 so that it no longer has legal armor, and to destroy its reputation by spreading the word about its ingrained, institutional antisemitic and anti-Israel bias.
