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.

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.

Wikipedia's 'Arbitrators' May Dive Into the Wikipedia Flood (Updated through 9/1)

Please see the bottom of this entry for updates,

Are Wikipedia's legions of anti-Israel editors in danger? 

That question is raised by an "arbitration" case that is currently being ginned up in one of the myriad internal Wikipedia discussion pages. This is its current location. It originated here, in yet another forum. 

I'll quickly cut to the chase and answer the question I just posed: Don't bet on it. It's possible, but 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. There's no reason to believe that pattern will end.

What happened was that an anti-Israel editor had sought sanctions against an editor who dared to stem the tide of anti-Israel propaganda, and the usual crew of pro-Hamas editors, led by the anti-Israel enforcer "Nableezy," swarmed in. Usually this would mean sanctions against the editor who antagonized the Wikipedia Flood. After all, the pro-Hamas tools and "POV-pushing" professional propagandists have the numbers to get their way.

But the discussion did not turn out as these things usually do. The pro-Hamas editors overplayed their hand, became abusive and tendentious, and what is known as a "boomerang" occurred. Rather than take sanctions against the pro-Hamas editors, however, the administrators involved in the discussion behaved in cowardly fashion. They referred the matter to what is known on Wikipedia as the "Arbitration Committee." "Arbcom" deals with protracted disputes and long-term editor behavior issues. The discussion now underway is seeking to determine if there will be a full-blown case.

Initially the discussion was surprisingly inhospitable to the pro-Hamas crew, who have not said much on the page as of now (Aug. 20). Some of the editors weighing in have raised points this blog has covered in the past: how pro-Hamas editors use their numbers to get their way, bludgeoning and harassing opposing editors and abusing Wikipedia's processes.

For instance, an editor of long experience named "Number 57," who is rarely seen in the so-called "Israel/Palestine" topic area, said as follows:

I edit around the edge of this topic area, focussing on Israeli politics and civil society, and have had the misfortune over the years to have ended up in disputes with editors pushing both anti-Israel and pro-Israel POV on articles where our paths corss. I very much welcome the suggestion that long-term tag-teaming, POV pushing and the ineffectiveness of current tools to stop this should be looked at. From my nearly 20 years' experience, the main issue has always been that there is a core group of 10-15 editors in this topic area (many of whom have been with us for well over a decade) who are primarily on Wikipedia to push their POV – anyone can look at their contribution histories and see that their contributions are primarily adding things that make their side look good/the other look bad and deleting information to the contrary; in discussions such as RMs, RfCs or AfDs, their stances are easily predicted based on their editing history. A further issue is that for most of the last two decades the two sides have been seriously mismatched in terms of numbers and one side has been consistently able to push their POV through weight of numbers, either by long-term tag teaming or by swinging poorly-attended discussions (and in my view the 30/500 restriction has actively worsened this situation by giving the long-term problematic editors an advantage).

"Number 57" is an "administrator," a member of the Wikipedia power structure, which gives his comments added weight.

Although this statement is afflicted by "bothsidesism," it still makes two crucial points, which I've emphasized in boldface, that this blog and other critics of Wikipedia's anti-Israel bias have made in the past. The 30/500 restriction, which was instituted at the behest of the rape-denying anti-Israel editor "Huldra," has been especially effective at cementing control of Wikipedia's Israel articles by the pro-Hamas bunch. Editors must have 30 days tenure and have made 500 edits to contribute in the "I/P" area. Wikipedia is supposedly the "encyclopedia anyone can edit," but that principle does not apply to articles controlled by the Wikipedia Flood. When it comes to articles that interest them, Wikipedia is the article they edit and everyone else must submit to their authority.

The pro-Hamas editors are clearly terrified by this case, judging from unhinged rants on the Nableezy user-talk page. The fanatical pro-Hamas editor Nishidani used the occasion to push anti-Zionist polemics. Clearly they are concerned. Could their control of Wikipedia be curbed? Could they be banned from "I/P" or kicked off Wikipedia entirely?

Things are so bad, Nableezy has such power as "boss" of the Wikipedia Flood, that an Israeli editor actually went to him to ask for permission to make an edit! Nableezy graciously granted permission. I understand this is due to an insane "mentorship" arrangement in which the Israeli editor, as a condition for not being topic-banned, must humiliatingly grovel before Wikipedia's number-one Hamas advocate and defer to his wisdom and experience. That is how bad things have become. "Ownership" of articles is prohibited by Wikipedia rules, but the rules don't apply to the Wikipedia Flood.

Positive steps could be taken by Arbcom, but it's very unlikely. Nableezy, Nishidani and the other pro-Hamas editors are experienced operators with a legion of fans and allies. They are the very epitome of what have come to be known on Wikipedia as "unblockables." An essay on the subject  describes the attributes of the "unblockables," one of which is that they have a "fan club" of supporters who have each other's back. That is known in wiki-parlance as "tag-teaming."

Nableezy's "user box"

Even at this early stage, you can already see two of the tactics the pro-Hamas editors are going to bring to bear: gaslighting and word salads. 

Nableezy deployed both rhetorical techniques in a comment on the Arbcom page in which he contended, presumably with a straight face, that "there is this misconception that there are 'pro-Israel' editors vs 'pro-Palestinian' editors, and that is both not true and has never been true." 

Let's reflect on the momentous hypocrisy and dishonesty at work here. This is an editor who has a "user box" on his personal Wikipedia page proclaiming that he "supports the right of all individual groups to violently resist military aggression and occupation by other parties." which is a wordy way of saying "terrorism by Hamas and Hezbollah." It is the only user box on his page, and it is in a central position in the middle.

Most Wikipedia editors have user boxes describing their location, their interests, their time on Wikipedia and other innocuous things. Nableezy's proclaims his advocacy of suicide bombings, rape, abductions and murder by the terrorists whose cause he advances in Wikipedia. But no, he's not a partisan! He's not taking sides when he fights to slant articles against Israel and force out editors who conflict with him. Nableezy and his pals are "defenders of the Wiki" while the editors trying to stop them are violating policies A, B, C, X, Y and Z. 

Editors are not pro- or anti-Israel, they are pro- or anti-Wikipedia. That is the stance the pro-Hamas editors will be taking. It has worked in the past and there's no reason to doubt that it will again.

'Calls For the Destruction of Israel'

Some of the most brazen anti-Israel Wikipedia activists have their underwear in a twist over the article entitled "Calls for the destruction of Israel." 

It's hilarious unless you realize that these people run Wikipedia: anti-Israel demagogues who are intent on twisting every article against Israel, and removing those that put Israel's enemies in a negative light. Naturally they hate it.

An effort to delete this article failed in January. Now the article is tagged for "neutrality" and a discussion is underway on how it fails to fall in line with the anti-Israel slant of the rest of Wikipedia.  Oh no! The article failed to use Journal of Palestine Studies! or Jewish Currents or any number of other anti-Israel cesspools.

A typical comment from the anti-Israel activist "Nishidani": 

Well, it's a piece of sloppy hackwork, worst of all, overlapping with the other two articles without contributing anythingt but confusion. Whatever is salvageable (I.e. whatever survives direct scrutiny of the sources paraphrased) should be moved to Legitimacy or anti-Zionism. 

The pro-Hamas brigade has arrived! Expect the article to get a going-over by the usual suspects. Watch this space.

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Remember that comments are open and can be anonymous. Tips, critiques, and suggestions are welcome, and I am receptive to guest blogs as well. They can be anonymous or otherwise. Just email me at WikipediaCritic at proton dot me

Wikipedia's Anti-Israel Obsession: An Introduction

Wikipedia displays a pattern of obsessive hostility toward Israel. 

It is a systemic, institutional problem, caused by a large and unrestrained group of anti-Israel, pro-Hamas editors. I call them the "Wikipedia Flood," the online counterpart of the "al-Aqsa Flood," the name Hamas gave to its murderous onslaught on Oct. 7, 2023.

This is a longstanding problem, and it has been exacerbated by the Gaza war.  Anti-Israel bias is so extreme that it frequently veers into antisemitism. 

This is a major problem. Wikipedia is one of the most highly trafficked and influential websites around, with 9.5 billion visits in December 2023 alone. It is a major target of anti-Israel activists, and their work has been a resounding success.

The purpose of this blog is to shed light on Wikipedia's anti-Israel bias on a continuing basis.   

Key issues

▶ Every single article related to the Arab-Israel conflict is distorted to reflect an anti-Israel point of view.

▶ Anti-Israel sources such as Al Jazeera, The Guardian and The Intercept are considered "reliable" and are used to provide the raw material for articles, while pro-Israel sources are downgraded, and some are prohibited. 

▶ Wikipedia processes, its "administrators" and "arbitrators," are unwilling to curb the depredations of pro-Hamas activist "editors."

▶ Activist "editors" create articles whose sole purpose is to disseminate anti-Israel hate.

▶ Pro-Israel editors are banned from articles related to Israel on drummed-up pretexts, or kicked off the website, if they complain about anti-Israel editors.

▶ Article discussion ("talk") pages are cesspools of crude anti-Israel hate. Oct. 7 atrocity denial, especially rape denial, is rife. This creates a hostile atmosphere for Jewish editors.

For the anti-Israel activist "editors" of Wikipedia, the "encyclopedia everyone can edit" is just another form of warfare. Their job is to fill it with anti-Israel polemics and do their best to oust pro-Israel editors on trumped-up charges. 

Thus an article that began as effort to explore the phenomenon of "Holocaust inversion" was twisted over time by anti-Israel and antisemitic editors into a platform for comparing Israelis to Nazis. The editor who created the article was banned from Wikipedia as retribution for his efforts to counter anti-Israel and antisemitic editors, and for exposing a long-running hoax created by Polish nationalist editors. 

Investigative journalist David Collier described the problem as follows in December 2020:

Some pages – such as the sections on Palestinian history – are incoherent and ahistorical garbage. The pages on Jews and antisemitism only help to spread a hatred of Jews. Those who set up the rules for Wikipedia may have anticipated acts of correctable terrorism on their pages – but did not foresee the war of attrition. Nobody was going to come along and attempt to rewrite history in a day. The best strategy is taking the current mindset apart brick by brick. Patiently over a number of years. That is what is happening with Wikipedia. . . . 

Every edit by someone with a Zionist leaning is placed under a microscope, if it gets past the gatekeepers at all – and then immediately contrasted with the placement of an anti-Zionist counter-argument.  

 In 2017, blogger Dani Ishan Behan stated:

Israel-related articles almost uniformly emphasize the Palestinian and Arab narrative while marginalizing the Jewish one. Rudimentary facts about Israel’s history: including Palestinian massacres on Jewish civilians, Arab intransigence being a primary factor in the conflict’s intractability, and even the Jewish people’s origins and indigeneity to the land of Israel are either downplayed or outright erased. 

The reason this can happen is that Wikipedia is rigged. 

Wikipedia has rules that ostensibly prevent this kind of thing from happening, they require neutrality and fairness, and it has been reported that Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales is pro-Israel. But Wales does not run Wikipedia. That is in the hands of largely anonymous volunteers, who let Wikipedia be gamed by anti-Israel editors. 

Even the most well-intentioned volunteer, unpaid "administrators" and "arbitrators" (a kind of super-administrator) are manipulated by pro-Hamas activists who dominate the articles on Israel and the Gaza conflict.

Wikipedia rules protect anti-Israel activists

Here's an example of how the rules are rigged to protect anti-Israel activists whose sole purpose is to turn Wikipedia into a propaganda organ:

The "user pages" of anti-Israel editors, such as the one maintained by the pro-Hamas activist "Nableezy," frequently proclaim their support for terrorism. This contributes to the anti-Israel atmosphere that pervades Wikipedia. Here is a "user box" on Nableezy's "user page." 

? This user supports the right of all individuals and groups to violently resist military aggression and occupation by other parties, but due to an alleged consensus he is disallowed from naming particular individuals or groups which certain administrators find to be unacceptable.

This pro-terrorist 'user box' is explicitly permitted by Wikipedia. 

The rules governing user pages prohibit them from containing "very divisive or offensive material not related to encyclopedia editing."  They also ban advocacy or support of grossly improper behaviors with no project benefit. The latter are defined as "statements or pages that seem to advocate, encourage, or condone these behaviors: vandalism, copyright violation, edit warring, harassment, privacy breach, defamation, and acts of violence."

But "acts of violence" are specifically defined to exempt support for Jew-killers:

("Acts of violence" includes all forms of violence but does not include mere statements of support for controversial groups or regimes that some may interpret as an encouragement of violence.)

Since Wikipedia allows editors to openly proclaim their support for Jew-killing terrorist groups, Jewish editors find themselves rubbing elbows on article talk pages with people like Nableezy who proclaim that they would be happy to see Jews murdered, their children and parents kidnapped, their daughters raped. 

According to one article from 2019, "recent information suggests that Nableezy works for The Electronic Intifada," a virulently anti-Israel website. It goes on to point out that Nableezy is especially active in trying to thin the ranks of the opposition by gaming the Wikipedia enforcement mechanisms. Nableezy has continued in that activity since that article was published in 2019, gaining in power and influence. 

A numbers game

Anti-Israel editors realize that winning the propaganda jihad on Wikipedia is a numbers game, and they see to it that the number of pro-Israel editors remains small. They do that by intimidating and bullying "the opposition" and seeking tenaciously to get them banned from articles on Israel and from the site itself. "Topic bans" of varying length are commonly handed out by administrators, acting at the behest of anti-Israel editors who compile laundry lists of trumped-up grievances. The administrators who oversee such things have broad power to act as they like, making up the rules as they go along.

On Wikipedia, the "community" rules. What "community" means in practice is "whoever shows up for a discussion." Pro-Hamas and anti-Israel editors have the numbers, and they "flood" article discussion pages where required, gathered in requisite quantities by email canvassing campaigns. One of the grievances frequently used to get pro-Israel editors topic-banned is that they act contrary to the phony "consensuses" established by anti-Israel editors.

Gaming "consensus" rules is especially problematic in determining which sources can and cannot be used, and how they are used in articles. "Reliable source" discussion pages and an alphabetized list of "perennial sources" show how anti-Israel sources are invariably usable, while pro-Israel sources are downgraded, thanks to the efforts of anti-Israel and far-left editors.

Al Jazeera and Amnesty International are fine. Fox News is not OK for "politics," so its reports on Israel are not usable for sourcing. The Nation is fine. Jacobin is fine. Jewish Virtual Library is not NGO Monitor is not. 

There is nothing on Wikipedia to stop aggressive, pro-Hamas editors from gaming Wikipedia's processes. When whistleblowers attempt to call them on their tactics, the whistleblowers themselves are punished. This is known on Wikipedia as "boomerang." 

David Collier describes as a "war of attrition" in which the far more numerous anti-Israel editors invariably come out on top.

Not a new subject

Wikipedia's systemic anti-Israel bias is not new. Here is a rundown of the literature on the subject.

In November 2019, a website called "The Israel Group" profiled anti-Israel editors. It was written about in the Washington Free Beacon: "Wikipedia's Anti-Israel Editors Unmasked" The website subsequently went dark. Its most recent web page, archived by the Wayback Machine in December 2021, can be found here.

The editors profiled there were as follows, in the order that was provided as of the most recent archived page, with the worst at the top: 

The "five worst" as of 2019: Brendan McKay aka User:Zero0000, User:Nableezy, User:Huldra, Peter Nicholas Dale aka User:Nishidani, User:Onceinawhile

"Dishonorable Mentions": User:Sean.hoyland, User:Malik Shabazz/MShabazz (has since left Wikipedia), User:Snooganssnoogans  (now known as User:Thenightaway, and largely avoids editing on Israel),

Although the article is dated, it provides a good resource on the tactics employed by anti-Israel editors. Since that website appeared, the cast of characters has grown considerably larger.

In addition to the David Collier and Dani Ishai Behan articles cited above, in 2008, the media watchdog HonestReporting published an article titled "Exposed – Anti-Israeli Subversion on Wikipedia," which cited this article describing manipulation of Wikipedia by the antisemitic website Electronic Intifada.

Lastly, CAMERA– Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis– writes about Wikipedia periodically.

One place you won't find meaningful examination of Wikipedia's anti-Israel bias are Wikipedia criticism websites, "Wikipediocracy," "Wikipedia Sucks" and "Wikipedia Review," which are dominated by anti-Israel editors. 

What can be done?

Behan concludes his 2017 Times of Israel blog as follows:

So what can be done about this? The answer is simple: everybody who cares about the truth must create an account, learn the site’s rules, and push back vigorously against those who would defame or delegitimize the Jewish people on the world’s largest online encyclopedia. Do not be intimidated by the task at hand, for there is too much at stake.

He is absolutely correct. 

Our advice:

Register an account at Wikipedia and play by the rules. The pro-Hamas editors will not. But even so, you will have an impact. The more editors push back against anti-Israel bias, the more likely they can have impact. 

Don't let anti-Israel editors provoke you into breaking the rules. They will goad you, insult you, when they see you as a threat. Ignore them.

Be patient. Stay away from subjects that are subject to "Arbitration Committee" restrictions on the "Israel-Palestine area," which were crafted by anti-Israel editors to restrict editing in those areas to registered accounts more than thirty days old with 500 and more edits.

Be sure to edit a wide variety of subjects. Edit articles about your interests, whatever they may be. The less controversial and less political the better. Editors who edit only to counter anti-Israel bias are far more likely to be singled out for punishment by the easily manipulated administrators.

Even if you cannot directly edit because your account is not old enough, you can request edits even if you do not log in to an account. But it is better to register an account, start editing and wait a month.

About us

We have no affiliation with any persons or organizations cited above, or any of the persons we cite in the review of literature above. We are paid by no one, this is not how we make our living, so our contributions here may be sporadic, and may be discontinued or interrupted at any time. We are neither a volunteer with nor affiliated with any organization outside Wikipedia.

Comments are open and can be anonymous. Tips, critiques, and suggestions are welcome, and I am receptive to guest blogs as well. Theycan  be anonymous or otherwise. Just email me at WikipediaCritic at proton dot me