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 Attacks German Antisemitism Fight

Lead section of Wikipedia's newly created article on Germany's antisemitism fight

Wikipedia struck a blow for antisemitism today. No, not against antisemitism, but in favor of it, smearing German efforts to fight antisemitism—and doing so on Wikipedia's front page. 

The online encyclopedia's legions of anti-Zionist editors have long been poisoning Wikipedia to promote a key part of the anti-Israel agenda: that the fight against antisemitism is bogus where anti-Zionists are concerned, and that most purported antisemites are actually just being "critical of Israel." 

Today they scored a big victory in that effort, promoting their agenda right on Wikipedia's highly-trafficked Main Page. 

The Main Page today says the following in its "Did you know" section:

[Did you know]... that one researcher found that nearly a third of the people cancelled over antisemitism allegations in Germany have been Jews?

The "Do you know" section showcases excerpts from newly created articles, and drives enormous traffic over to the articles mentioned. This one features an article created a few weeks ago titled "Anti-antisemitism in Germany." If you click over there you find that it is an anti-Zionist polemic that is intensely critical of the German opposition to antisemitism. 

The vast majority of that article is an outright attack on the German antisemitism fight, containing little that actually describes the antisemitism problem in Germany, which has become a serious problem since Oct. 7, and instead is devoted to bashing efforts to counter it. 

That's a blatant violation of Wikipedia neutrality rules, but as I have pointed out before, Wikipedia policies do not apply to the "Wikipedia flood" of anti-Israel, anti-Zionist and sometimes antisemitic editors.  

Half the lead of the article consists of this anti-Zionist diatribe:

Controversially, the German government officially classifies the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, the accusation that Israel is committing the crime of apartheid against Palestinians, and the depiction of Israel as a colonial or settler-colonial entity, as antisemitic. Many of those arrested and cancelled in Germany over allegations of antisemitism have been Jews critical of Israel's policies.

Further down in the article you can see how thoroughly the article has been poisoned by anti-Zionist editors in the "Ideology," "Deplatforming and arrest of Jews" and "Reception" sections, which comprise most of the article.  

The "Deplatforming" section portrays the fight against German antisemitism as so broken that it targets innocent Jews who are outraged by that terrible regime over there in Israel. 

To the right is a photo and caption that drives home the anti-Zionist point with all the subtlety of a hydrogen bomb. Beneath a photograph of a sign saying "Free Palestine From German Guilt" is the following anti-Zionist caption:

German guilt over the Holocaust motivates unquestioning support for Israel, which has led to Jews voicing criticism of Israel being accused of antisemitism; Israeli filmmaker Yuval Abraham said in response to such accusations, "If this is Germany's way of dealing with its guilt over the Holocaust, they are emptying it of all meaning"

All three illustrations in the article are abused in similar fashion to make anti-Israel propaganda points.  

The wording in the "Do You Know" item was taken from an article in the British anti-Israel organ The Guardian, quoting the anti-Zionist activist Emily Dische-Becker. 

The Guardian article was authored last February by Kenan Malik, a British Muslim writer, in an article lecturing Jews on what is and isn't antisemitism. That, in turn hyperlinks toward a podcast in something called "The Dig," in which Dische-Becker is interviewed. In other words, this smear of German antisemitism efforts was in effect "laundered" through a supposedly "reliable" source, The Guardian, but originates from an impermissible "self-published" source, a podcast. 

By the way:

If you don't like that article don't bother bringing your complaint to the self-styled Wikipedia criticism message board "Wikipediocracy." It was created and largely permeated with anti-Zionist content by the user "Jayen466." He identifies himself as Andreas Kolbe, co-founder of Wikipediocracy. As I've mentioned previously, Wikipediocracy functions as a platform for anti-Israel editors.

Anti-Zionist Wikipedia Editors Fight to Control 'Zionism' Article

Fix the anti-Zionist slant? No way. Reinforce it? Sure!

Ever since my blog item appeared on the Wikipedia Zionism article, there have been complaints on social media about how the article had been transformed into an anti-Zionist polemic. These were picked up by the Jewish-American press, and today it caught the attention of the Israeli media.

Author Hen Mazzig observed on X that the article's disparagement of Ashkenazi Jewish links to the Holy Land mirrors the discredited Khazar theory of Jewish origins. The Zionism article, he said, "isn't just inaccurate, it's downright antisemitic." Wikipedia, he said, "has become a hate site." Congressman Ritchie Torres said on X that "Wikipedia caricatures Zionism" and engaged in a "warped telling of history" by branding Zionists as "colonizers."  

The 'Khazar' theory

Wikipedia advertises itself as the "encyclopedia anyone can edit." That is how it sells itself to the donors and NGOs that pour money into its coffers, providing top people at the Wikimedia Foundation with enormous salaries (see Schedule J, here). So naturally, once they became aware of the terrible state the Zionism article was in, a number of people—established editors and newcomers alike—tried to rid the article of its anti-Zionist and antisemitic slant. 

The result is an exhibition of the control that pro-Hamas editors over the Zionism article and others, how Wikipedia's processes are rigged in their favor, and how nearly impossible it is to dislodge them. 

Much of the activity is taking place on the "talk" or discussion page of the article, which now appears like this.

First a long-established editor weighed in with an explanation of how the lead paragraph gave excessive weight to "a particular interpretation of Zionism as a specific form, namely the 19th century through 1930s versions of Zionism," ignoring its future evolution,

Ignoring their points entirely, their argument was dismissed in a one-sentence reply ("I disagree. The thing in itself as described by the best academic sources is the way to go") by the anti-Zionist editor Dan Murphy, an ex-reporter whose peculiar claim to fame (a disgusting, mocking tweet on the ISIS beheading of hostage Steve Sotloff) I described in a previous blog post.

And on it went, on and on and on. It was the beginning of a 4700-word back-and-forth that is still underway at this writing, involving multiple editors. That's not 4700 words over a period of weeks or months. That's 4700 words over one single day. This discussion began only yesterday and it has already stretched into such astonishing length.

That is typical of discussions when the Wikipedia Flood of pro-Hamas editors are involved. They just go on and on and won't let up, pouring on the verbiage in wearisome and repetitive quantities. As I described in a blog post last month, Wikipedia talk pages under the control of anti-Israel editors use such methods to wear down their opponents, using the sheer numbers that they can bring to bear. 

The reaction to the Zionism article's sorry state brought out another asset in the pro-Hamas editors' arsenal: the "extended confirm" rule.

Anti-Zionist editors' control of the articles is enhanced by that rule, which requires that in the "Israel/Palestine" subject area you must have thirty days on Wikipedia and 500 edits in order to edit an article or even discuss the subject on the "talk" page. 

What this means, in a practical sense, that the "encyclopedia anyone can edit" is actually an encyclopedia that, in relevant subject ares, is dominated by a handful of pro-Hamas operatives, with the aid of feckless, biased and passive site administrators.

Yes, you can make an "edit request" if you don't meet the "extended confirm" requirement. See how two such requests were handled. They are in the illustration at the top of the page.

First came a request to change anti-Zionist language in the lead paragraph back to where it was before it became anti-Zionist. That was shot down easily. It was "under discussion above" by editors who met the "extended-confirm" rule. That nicety was happily pointed out by one of the anti-Zionist editors.

Then cane a request to reinforce the anti-Zionist language in the lead with a footnote from a book about "settler colonialism." Of course! Consider it done.

The Wikipedia Flood does not like scrutiny. Within the past few hours, the anti-Zionist ex-reporter Murphy complained about the social media and press attention the article had been getting, in a section he sneeringly titled "Bat Signal."  

Murphy's word choice, which he borrowed from the Batman comics, gives an idea of the arrogance and condescension many Wikipedia editors display toward the outside world. They are both hypersensitive to and dismissive of external attention, even though everything they do is visible to the outside world.

Pro-Hamas editors like Murphy do their article-slanting in the open. Every single word that they write is a matter of public record for all to see. This entire blog is an accumulation of what they do and write on one of the world's most trafficked and influential websites. 

So when the pro-Hamas editor "Selfstudier" makes use of an antisemitic slur ("pound of flesh") on a discussion page, it's right there in plain view for everyone to see. One does not require any special access. You just simply have to go on the web and read.

Yet they just can't stand it when anyone holds up a mirror to what they do.