Wikipedia's 'Arbitrators' Prove There Are No Adults in the Room—Only Kangaroos

Wikipedia's kangaroo court points up the need for Section 230 reform

As I've mentioned in several posts, Wikipedia's highest tribunal, its "Arbitration Committee," has been grappling with the "Palestine-Israel" topic area since August. Over the past two weeks, they finally cranked out a tentative decision.

The proceedings are still underway, and there is still potential for mischief. But it's been mostly decided, and the great Aaron Bandler has done a thorough job of summarizing its "actions" in Jewish Journal. 

As Aaron explains, the anti-Israel editors Iskandar323, Levivich, Nableezy, Selfstudier, Makeandtoss, and Nishidani were topic-banned, which can and will be appealed after one year. Zero0000, an administrator, was "warned." Two pro-Israel editors,  AndreJustAndre and BilledMammal, were also topic banned.

My takeaways:

• While there was much whining by the affected anti-Israel editors, this was a net win for the Wikipedia Flood. They far outnumber editors willing to oppose them. Six topic bans barely dent their ranks, while two of the most active editors seeking to restore balance to articles were topic banned, and one faces a possible site ban as described below. 

• Arbcom ignored some of the very worst anti-Israel editors, such as the rape-denier Huldra and the silky Sean.hoyland, valued by the "Flood" for cranking out meaningless "data" to "prove" that Wikipedia is awash with pro-Israel "sockpuppets."

• Only one pro-Hamas editor was banned, Ïvana. That took place before the proceedings began and was caused by her role in an offsite pro-Hamas effort to slant editing on Wikipedia. Exposure by this blog and Ashley Rindsberg in Pirate Wires made that impossible to ignore. 

• At this writing it appears that the most active pro-Israel editor in the case, "AndreJustAndre," may be banned from the site based on trumped-up misconduct allegations by anti-Israel editors. None of the topic-banned pro-Hamas editors face that punishment.

• 

  Meet 'CaptainEek'

  The arb who drafted the preliminary decision, "CaptainEek," didn't even pretend to read the evidence and "workshop" analysis. Her laziness was so blatant that she was derided on Wikipediocracy, a criticism site that pays close attention to arbcom. One regular sneered, "With CaptainEek at the helm, the Titanic would never have hit an iceberg. It wouldn't have made it out of port." 

• CaptainEek claimed in her decision draft that AndreJustAndre made "specific edits after an off-wiki blogger requested those edits be made." That, she later clarified, referred to this blog. That contention was so utterly bonkers—even a casual reader knows that I don't "request" edits—that it was rejected by the other arbs. 

• While they did not adopt Captain Eek's wildest claims, most arbs were almost as irresponsible and lazy as she was. The panel's arbitrary decision-making was harshly criticized by other editors in the "talk" page of the proposed decision. On Wikipediocracy, a user pointed to "multiple editors calling out arbcom for conclusions based on incorrect ‘facts,’" and added "They didn’t read the evidence. They just want to be done."

In short, arbcom showed outright favoritism toward pro-Hamas editors by their selective and skewed enforcement of the rules, and proved itself to be a classic "kangaroo court." 

That's not hyperbole. Arbcom fits the dictionary definition of "a court characterized by irresponsible, unauthorized, or irregular status or procedures."

The very fact that I have to refer to a member of Wikipedia's highest tribunal by their juvenile handle shows how utterly broken Wikipedia is. Most arbs, CaptainEek among them, conceal their identities in star-chamber fashion despite the immense power they wield on the site.

 

What these anonymous Wiki-jurists proved in this case is that Wikipedia's highest tribunal is both unwilling and unable to curb highly organized propagandists who infiltrate the site to push pro-Hamas and antisemitic propaganda. 

Their actions prove that they are unserious. The goofy pictures they post of themselves, like the ones CaptainEek posts on her personal Wikipedia page (above) just gild the lily.

And since arbcom is an outright kangaroo court that disregards evidence and behaves without accountability, it is actually an obstacle to improving the site. How can editors oppose the pro-Hamas operatives if they believe arbcom will come swooping down and kick them out without a valid reason?  

Wikipedia's editor-oversight panel is allowed to fester like this for a reason. 

The highly compensated executives of the Wikimedia Foundation, which owns the servers, take no responsibility for Wikipedia content because of Section 230 of the Communications Act of 1934. 

The Congressional Research Service says that Section 230

generally precludes providers and users from being held liable—that is, legally responsible—for information provided by another person, but does not prevent them from being held legally responsible for information that they have developed or for activities unrelated to third-party content. Courts have interpreted Section 230 to foreclose a wide variety of lawsuits and to preempt laws that would make providers and users liable for third-party content. For example, the law has been applied to protect online service providers like social media companies from lawsuits based on their decisions to transmit or take down user-generated content.

There's a need for that law and it shouldn't be repealed. It protects innocuous websites from unwarranted legal attack. But it can function as a recipe for lack of accountability, and that is not acceptable. 

Section 230 should not apply to Wikipedia.

Pro-Hamas Editors Use 'Wikipedia Lawfare' to Ban Pro-Israel Editors

 

Pro-Hamas editors claim a defunct account is an 'Emmanuel Goldstein' pro-Israel mastermind

Since August I've described how Wikipedia's highest tribunal, its so-called "Arbitration Committee," has been slowly and reluctantly addressing editor misconduct in the "Palestine-Israel" topic area. That effort is finally winding down, and a key part of the pro-Hamas editors' strategy is clear.  

They claim that the main problem in this topic area is not their own behavior, not their "ownership" of articles, not their perversion of Wikipedia's "neutrality" mandate, but widespread, improper pro-Israel editing.

That's right. Your lying eyes deceive. The real problem in articles accusing Israel of genocide and massacres etc etc is excessive pro-Israel editing due to diabolical use of "sockpupeting," in which villainous pro-Israel people create phony accounts to pad talk page discussions to go in their direction.

The fact that discussions in these articles' talk pages never, ever go in the pro-Israel direction, and the articles themselves are notoriously anti-Israel, is never mentioned when pro-Hamas editors push this line. They portray themselves as heroic "defenders of the Wiki" who are a front line of defense against those horrible people, preventing further damage to Wikipedia, further pro-Israel bias.

This nutty claim is made frequently on the arbcom case "evidence" page, in which prolific pro-Hamas editor "Makeandtoss" posted a chart—arbcom loves charts!—to "prove" that the "actual root causes of problem are sockpuppets who are canvassing, stonewalling, coordinating and disrupting." 

This claim is absurd on its face, for the simple reasons that all the sockpuppets claimed in that chart were caught, and before they were caught absolutely nothing they did had any lasting or even transitory impact on anything. All were new accounts, all outnumbered, all shouted down.

Most genuine sockpuppeting are easy to catch, because Wikipedia used a device called "checkuser" to determine if someone is using computers with the same or similar IP address to create multiple Wikipedia accounts.  

And here's where it gets interesting. If checkuser comes up naught, Wikipedia's pro-Hamas editors have long been able to get accounts banned by claiming that the accounts are editing similar to accounts that were banned a long time ago. This is known as "behavioral evidence." Wikipedia administrators, who are often hostile to Israel themselves, fall for this ruse frequently.

Long-defunct banned pro-Israel accounts, especially one dormant since 2019 known as "Icewhiz," are commonly used for that purpose. 

Icewhiz is frequently accused of contaminating Wikipedia by his voracious Israel advocacy and prolific sockpuppet-making, making that long-banned editor a kind of "Emanuel Goldstein" figure, to be hated by all right-thinking Wikipedians.

The beauty of accusing someone of being an "Icewhiz sock" is that you don't need much evidence. In fact, you can get people banned if the evidence doesn't amount to anything.

Of the 12 accounts cited by Makeandtoss in his chart, nine of which were supposed "Icewhiz socks," all but were two were caught by "behavioral" evidence despite nonexistent or dubious technical evidence. 

For example: Two pro-Israel accounts in the Makeandtoss chart, "UnspokenPassion" and "O.maximov," were blocked as Icewhiz socks in September after a complaint by the anti-Israel editor "Levivich."

He contended that "O.maximov and UnspokenPassion show the same basic POV, similarity of comments, and "drive-by" habit," as "evidenced" by the following horrors:

Israel

• O.maximov ("if the Israeli War of Independence isn't mentioned, then it makes no sense to mention the Nakba")
• UnspokenPassion ("If we include Nakba, we’d have to bring in more narratives, like the Independence War, as mentioned above.")
• This is the only edit UnspokenPassion has made to the talk page, no edits to the article; O.maximov has edited both

Genocide of indigenous peoples

• O.maximov ("We're looking at two groups, both with historical ties to the land, both claiming indigenity.")
• UnspokenPassion ("The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is generally understood as a struggle between two ethnic groups, both laying claim to being indigenous.")
• These are the only edits either account made to that article's talk page. O.maximov made one edit to the article; UnspokenPassion has made no edits to the article.

Palestinian suicide terrorism - an article created by UnspokenPassion

• UnspokenPassion ("... the term 'terrorism' is entirely appropriate (for instance, see examples like Islamic terrorism, Jewish extremist terrorism, etc.).")
• O.maximov ("It is unclear to me why there are calls to remove the term from this article while its usage in the above mentioned articles like Jewish extremist terrorism, Islamic terrorism, and, I will add, Israel and state-sponsored terrorism is accepted.")
• This is the only edit O.maximov has made to this article or its talk page

Based on that nothingburger, the two editors were assumed to be that villain Icewhiz, up to his old tricks. Administrator (and arbitrator) H.J. Mitchell agreed, saying:

I'm reluctant to draw definitive conclusions here but the behaviour is consistent with previous IW socks and CU data shows that both of these accounts are unusually sophisticated in obfuscating their IPs. Both are using proxies and are very careful not to overlap. I'm gonna call this  Likely and block both.

Note that the technical evidence actually does not prove that these editors are the same person, but he ascribes that to them being "unusually sophisticated in obfuscating their IPs." The problem is that "the behaviour is consistent with previous IW [Icewhiz] socks." Which he does not elaborate but apparently refers to the nothingburger quoted above. 

Veteran anti-Israel editor "Sean.hoyland" piled on with a presentation of his own, which he placed in a Google Docs file to nail another pro-Israel editor, ABHammad. (Be careful clicking on that Google Docs file, as it shows your account if you are logged in to Google). ABHammad was subsequently kicked off Wikipedia on the basis of that "evidence."

What's happening here is the Wikipedia counterpart of "lawfare," and they are making the most of it. Pro-Hamas editors are contending in the arbcom case that these sockpuppets, even though they were caught, even though their influence is nil, are just the tip of the iceberg of a massive pro-Israel editing push, and that the topic area is already infected with bogus pro-Israeli accounts.   

In one recent posting, Makeandtoss claims that he has "extremely important new evidence relevant to what I had described as 'systemic and institutional manipulation.'" 

A day later, obviously shaken by the enormity of the crimes he has uncovered, he posted:

I have now emailed the committee my evidence, which unfortunately does indeed indicate extensive state actor involvement, particularly at the highest levels. This evidence can be posted in other WP venues to raise awareness among both editors and admins, but I believe it is particularly relevant for this one, so that preventative action can be taken.

Oh no! Thank heavens for heroes like this, protecting Wikipedia from this scourge. 

Will all that massive pro-Israel sockpuppeting and "manipulation" be curbed?  Will arbcom valiantly fight this horror, this stain on its reputation? Stay tuned. 

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.

Wikimedia Official Puts Anti-Israel Poison on Wikipedia's Main Page

Thanks to a Wikimedia Sverige official, Wikipedia accused Israel of a war crime on its main page

Last June, when the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations complained about Wikipedia denigrating the ADL, it was rudely blown off.

Ever wonder why Wikipedia's parent company, the Wikimedia Foundation, treats Jews and Israel with contempt? One clue comes by examining the kind of people who staff the dozens of affiliates, chapters and other offshoots bankrolled by the Foundation. 

John Cummings

In this post we'll take a look at one of them, John Cummings, a Brit who is "Project Manager for International Organisations" at Wikimedia Sverige in Sweden, which describes itself as "the national local chapter of Wikimedia Foundation." 

Wikimedia "chapters" get grants from the Wikimedia Foundation but are legally separate from them. The corporate veil is designed to insulate the Foundation from liability for the skewed, propaganda-laced content of Wikipedia and its counterparts abroad, while funding them and letting them use the Wikimedia "brand" in their fundraising.

The multiple layers of corporate insulation also give the WMF deniability when it comes to the activities of chapter executives like Cummings. 

On Wikipedia, Cummings is an active member of the "Wikipedia Flood" of anti-Israel, anti-Zionist and often antisemitic editors who have turned every Wikipedia article on Israel and the Gaza war into an outlet for pro-Hamas propaganda. 

The most skillful and experienced of them, such as Cummings, create articles, promoting them on Wikipedia's main page, to advance the cause.

Cummings has a suitable pedigree for his anti-Israel activities. For six years he was "Wikimedian in Residence" at UNESCO, the infamous Israel-hating United Nations unit. "I work with UNESCO and other UN organisations to have the understanding, skills and relationships to be able to share their knowledge on Wikipedia," he pompously boasts on his LinkedIn page. 

In his current post he helps UN outfits use Wikipedia for publicity purposes. Or as he puts it: "I help UN agencies and other international organisations share their knowledge and content on Wikipedia." There's lots of synergy between his day job and his hobby of bashing Israel on Wikipedia, needless to say.

Cummings' crowning achievement for the Wikipedia Flood is a blatantly one-sided article, which he created in April 2024, whose sole purpose is to spread the blood libel that Israel is guilty of the war crime of "ecocide." 

He not only created the article but was the driving force in putting it on Wikipedia's main page. The pro-Hamas poison appeared there on May 29th.

Here is how the article appeared when he created it on April 7, 2024. 

John Cummings' Israel-bashing 'environmental impact' article, as he wrote it in April 2024

Article leads are very important, because many readers don't read beyond them, and this one is as "neutral" as a vampire bat. It is totally one-sided, making it seem as if Israel is laying waste to Gaza just for the hell of it. It makes no reference to Hamas and no reference to the thousands of Hamas incendiary arson balloons, dating back years, that deliberately set ablaze thousands of acres of Israeli farmlands near Gaza, and the fires set by Hezbollah in northern Israel over the past few months.

The "highlight" of the article as Cummings created it, and pretty much how it reads now, is the "ecocide" libel, an accusation that Israel is deliberately laying waste to Gaza's ecology just for kicks.

The 'Ecocide' section of Cummings' article and his footnoted sources.

Cummings sourced his pro-Hamas propaganda diatribe almost entirely to the anti-Israel British organ The Guardian and to "Truthout," a far-left blog. As a self-published blog, its use is discouraged to source articles, but sourcing rules mean little to the Wikipedia Flood.

Just two days after creating the grotesquely slanted article, Cummings pushed for it to be featured as a "Did you know" item on the main page, framing it as a war crimes accusation against Israel in Wikipedia's voice. 

Cummings framed his "DYK" nomination as an accusation of "ecocide."

As you can see from the "Did you know" nomination discussion, the article received immediate pushback from an editor, who chastised the lead section of the article for "hyperbole" and for failing Wikipedia's "neutral point of view" policy. But eventually the article and the main page "DYK" were worded exactly as Cummings wanted.

In addition to this impressive achievement, Cummings has generated puffy articles on minor organizations with anti-Israel purposes. To boost the visibility of the latter and help them with their fundraising, he ensures that they are publicized on the main page as "DYK" items.

He did that with an obscure activist named Mira El Helbawi  and her organization Connecting Humanity, who raise money from naive westerners to give "ordinary Gazans" (and not Hamas, heaven forbid!) eSim cards. Likewise he made sure that Wikipedia gave a main-page plug to "Artists4Ceasefire," a group of anti-Israel Hollywood types who pushed for a Hamas victory via  ceasefire in October, while the blood was still coagulating in southern Israel.

The "Connecting Humanity" main page plug, which appeared on April 21, was a kind of two-for-one special, simultaneously promoting that dubious Gaza charity while also giving a shout-out to Al Jazeera "journalist" Hind Khoudary, a Hamas operative who turned over Gaza peace activists to the terror organization. 

Cummings publicized a dubious Gaza charity and a Hamas operative on Wikipedia's main page 

The Wikipedia article on Khoudary, linked in the DYK item, does not mention her despicable conduct of course. She betrayed her fellow Gazans months before the DYK item appeared, so Cummings was perfectly aware of her odious actions when he proposed mentioning Khoudary in the DYK. The idea originated with "Makeandtoss," a fellow member of the Wikipedia Flood.

It's not clear from the Wikimedia Foundation's opaque, vaguely worded Form 990 how much of its immense contributor dollars flow into Cummings' bank account or into Wikimedia Sverige for that matter. Funding of chapters is lumped in with other grants. 

Even without Cummings, there were already plenty of reasons to tell the Wikipedia Foundation to go away when it comes begging for money at the end of every year. Knowing that your money goes to pay the salary of an anti-Israel activist is icing on the cake.

Wikipedia Decrees: Israel is an Apartheid State

'Israel and apartheid' article before and after pro-Hamas editors attacked (click to enlarge)

When you blog about Wikipedia's anti-Israel obsession, there is so much going on that it's possible to miss important stuff. I did. I've just learned, totally through happenstance, that in recent weeks the "Wikipedia Flood" of pro-Hamas editors has achieved a major victory that received little if any attention outside Wikipedia.

Through sheer force of numbers, and by cannily working the system, they have manueuvered Wikipedia into saying, in its own voice, that Israel is an apartheid state, right up there with South Africa in the bad old days.

This propaganda victory achieves a major objective of pro-Hamas editors, which is to put Wikipedia as an institution on the Hamas bandwagon. It's not enough to twist articles and make them biased. They want Wikipedia to become part of their propaganda war against Israel. 

They do this in two ways, both of which took place with the "Israeli apartheid" article:

1.  Changing the titles of articles so that Wikipedia says flat-out that Israel is a no-good, genocide-committing apartheid state.

2. Rewriting the articles themselves to make those same statements, removing all balance, neutrality and words like "alleged," and not giving or downplaying the Israeli side of the story. 

They carried out their mission in the "apartheid" article not long after they rammed through a change in the title of an article so that Wikipedia itself says that Israel is committing genocide in the Gaza war. 

While all the oxygen was being consumed by the "Gaza genocide" controversy, they quietly did the same thing for an article that had been titled "Israel and apartheid." Now it's titled "Israeli apartheid," 

As a result of this title change, and previously by a months-long rewriting of the article itself, Wikipedia is saying in its own voice that Israel is committing apartheid. It's not treated as an accusation that Israel and its defenders fervently deny. It's a fact, poison to be spread around the world on the most-read English language reference site.

The mechanics of the change took place in two steps, first preceding the October 7 Hamas slaughters and then afterwards, when the Wikipedia Flood commenced attacking articles in earnest.

At the top of this blog post you can how they turned the article into Hamas propaganda. 

On the left is how the article appeared in June 4, 2023, as captured by the Wayback Machine. (The article history shows the same version of the article but not what its title was at the time.) On the right is how it appears as of Sept. 19.

Aside from the change in the title, the beginning of the article was completely differently than it is today. In June 2023 the title of the article was neutral ("Israel and apartheid") and the lead of the article read as follows:

Israel is accused by international, Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups of committing the crime of apartheid under the 2002 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, both in the occupied Palestinian territories and, by some, in Israel proper. Israel and its supporters deny the charges.

That wasn't good enough. The pro-Hamas editors aren't into neutrality or fairness. They want outright propaganda, and they were emboldened by Oct. 7. 

In the months that followed, and at an accelerated pace after Oct. 7, they were able to turn the article into outright, unashamed anti-Israel propaganda. Now the title is "Israeli apartheid" and the article currently says as follows in the first paragraph:

Israeli apartheid is a system of institutionalized segregation and discrimination in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories and to a lesser extent in Israel proper. This system is characterized by near-total physical separation between the Palestinian and the Israeli settler population of the West Bank, as well as the judicial separation that governs both communities, which discriminates against the Palestinians in a wide range of ways. Israel also discriminates against Palestinian refugees in the diaspora and against its own Palestinian citizens.

Note that "Israeli apartheid" is stated as fact, without even a weak attempt at balance or neutrality.

The pro-Hamas editors, who coordinate their efforts offsite, drove the point home in a new second paragraph:

After the 1948 Palestine war, Israel denied Palestinian refugees who were expelled or fled from what became its territory the right of return and right to their lost properties. Since the 1967 Six Day War, Israel has been occupying the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, which is now the longest military occupation in modern history, and in contravention of international law has been constructing large settlements there that separate Palestinian communities from one another and prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state. The settlements are mostly encircled by the Israeli West Bank barrier. While the Jewish settlers are subject to Israeli civil law, the Palestinian population is subject to military law. Settlers also enjoy access to separate roads and exploit the region's natural resources at its Palestinian inhabitants' expense.

I could spend the rest of this blog item and a dozen others dissecting, point by point, how this new paragraph is a total rewriting of history. Suffice to say that it does not even pretend to comply with Wikipedia policies requiring neutrality.

To gild the lily, during the summer of 2023 someone added a photo showing a street in Hebron upon which someone stenciled (in English for foreign consumption or perhaps just this photo) the words "Apartheid Street." The photo, taken during a propaganda tour of the West Bank, was uploaded to Flickr by a British anti-Zionist politician named John E. Austin.  

The title change happened swiftly on the "talk page" of the article. The entirety of the discussion can be found here.

It began last July 20, when the veteran anti-Israel editor "Makeandtoss" commenced the "requested move" discussion with the comment that "this move should have been implemented years ago."

Pretty much everyone agreed. Unlike the two-month discussion on the effort by these same coterie of editors to say in Wikipedia's voice that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza, there was little substantive discussion at all. Not a single editor objected. The deed was done on August 5 by an administrator named "Robertsky" just two weeks after it was proposed.

While the lack of interest in this title change is startling, as is the lack of pushback into the article's gradual transformation into blatant Hamas propaganda, that's not really surprising. 

The pro-Hamas editors are well-organized offsite and, above all, far more numerous than the editors who might oppose them. They can branch out all around Wikipedia and bring their friends with them.

They are often editors of long-standing. "Makeandtoss" has been around for ten years. Such editors  know how to work the system.

As the "apartheid" article's transformation into Hamas literature demonstrates, they've done an effective job of turning Wikipedia from a reliable if flawed source of information on the Middle East into a propaganda-filled dust bin.