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Wikipedia’s quiet revolution: How a coordinated group of editors reshaped the Israeli-Palestinian narrative

The edits in question range from minor tweaks — removing ties between Jewish history and the land of Israel — to major alterations, such as the omission of references to the atrocities committed during the Oct. 7th massacre.

By Debbie Weiss, The Algemeiner

In an era dominated by search engines and instant information, Wikipedia holds an outsized influence. For millions of users, it is often the first — and sometimes the only — source of information on global events and historical contexts.

Yet, as investigative journalist Ashley Rindsberg revealed in an explosive report, a quiet yet coordinated operation has taken root among the online encyclopedia’s editors, monumentally reshaping the way the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is perceived.

In a conversation with The Algemeiner this week, Rindsberg asserted that the campaign has “actually changed what appears to be the face of not just the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but of the entire justification for Israel’s right to exist and legitimacy, which is the real aim.”

In a detailed exposé published by the American media company Pirate Wires in October, Rindsberg outlined a coalition of approximately 40 Wikipedia editors that has systematically altered thousands of articles to tilt public opinion against Israel.

These individuals, acting in concert, have executed around 850,000 edits on nearly 10,000 articles on the conflict, Rindsberg said, subtly shifting the ideological foundation of content related to Israel, the Palestinians, and even broader Middle Eastern geopolitics.

Ideological Subversion at Scale

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“What we’ve seen with the Palestine-Israel articles topic area on Wikipedia is a wholesale shift in the ideological underpinning of those articles,” Rindsberg said.

The report cited one prominent example:

These efforts are remarkably successful. Type “Zionism” into Wikipedia’s search box and, aside from the main article on Zionism (and a disambiguation page), the auto-fill returns: “Zionism as settler colonialism,” “Zionism in the Age of the Dictators” (a book by a pro-Palestinian Trotskyite), “Zionism from the Standpoint of its Victims,” and “Racism in Israel.”

The edits in question range from minor tweaks — removing ties between Jewish history and the land of Israel — to major alterations, such as the omission of references to the atrocities committed during the Hamas-led attack across southern Israel last Oct. 7, including, most egregiously, references of rape and other acts of sexual violence.

The group has also reportedly sanitized articles on controversial historical figures, including those with ties to Nazi Germany such as the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini, as well as diluting mentions of human rights abuses by the Iranian regime.

In an article on “Jews,” for example, an editor removed the phrase “Land of Israel” from a key sentence on the origin of Jewish people. The article’s short description (that appears on search results) was changed from “Ethnoreligious group and nation from the Levant” to “Ethnoreligious group and cultural community.”

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“Though subtle, the implication is significant: unlike nations, ‘cultural communities’ don’t require, or warrant, their own states,” Rindsberg wrote in his report.

The Role of Tech for Palestine

The operation has been bolstered by Tech for Palestine, a pro-Palestinian tech advocacy group. According to Rindsberg’s investigation, the group works in tandem with expert Wikipedia editors to execute coordinated editing campaigns.

Editors then work in pairs or trios in a bid to evade detection, Rindsberg said in his report.

Tech for Palestine established a dedicated Wikipedia Collaboration channel designed to streamline their efforts. The initiative involved recruiting volunteers, guiding them through structured orientation sessions, and addressing challenges.

The channel’s welcome message highlighted its strategic intent with a pointed question: “Why Wikipedia? It is a widely accessed resource, and its content influences public perception.”

A veteran editor known as Ïvana, whose username prominently features the anti-Israel red triangle often used to identify and target Jews, was appointed as the channel’s resident Wikipedia expert.

The editing group’s influence extends beyond conflict-related articles to include profiles of celebrities, aiming to amplify sympathetic narratives while muting criticisms of terrorist organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah.

Millions of readers are impacted. As Wikipedia articles frequently dominate search engine results, especially those of Google, the changes effectively dictate how global audiences understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

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“Millions and millions of people are being fed information that has been essentially produced by a group of 40 pro-Palestine editors acting in a coordinated fashion,” Rindsberg told The Algemeiner.

The ramifications are vast. Wikipedia’s model of open, community-driven editing is predicated on the assumption of good faith.

By altering historical narratives and omitting key details, they are not merely influencing opinion but actively reshaping reality for an unwitting global audience, and in this case, Rindsberg said, “completely altering the way the world sees the conflict as well as the region.”

After Rindsberg’s report was published, Ïvana was “summoned” — in her words — by Wikipedia’s Arbitration Committee and is reportedly facing a potential lifetime ban from the platform. Rindsberg told The Algemeiner that other investigations have also been launched as a result of the article.

The exposé was published weeks after Wikipedia editors decided that the article “Allegations of genocide in the 2023 Israeli attack on Gaza” should be renamed “Gaza genocide,” a change that appears to outwardly accuse Israel of committing genocide in the Palestinian enclave during its military campaign against Hamas terrorists.

In June, 43 Jewish organizations signed a letter sent to the Wikimedia Foundation lambasting Wikipedia’s conclusion that the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) is not a credible source for information about antisemitism and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.