The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) is alleging that numerous Wikipedia editors have engaged in a “coordinated campaign” to smear the state of Israel and violate the website’s policies to insert pro-Hamas narratives into articles covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The new ADL report, titled “Editing for Hate: How Anti-Israel and Anti-Jewish Bias Undermines Wikipedia’s Neutrality,” is a collaborative investigation performed by researchers from the ADL and the Center for Technology and Society (CTS) that analyzed thousands of edits and chat logs from 30 “bad faith,” “suspicious” Wikipedia editors going back to 2002.
“Most readers assume Wikipedia is a reliable online encyclopedia, but in reality, it has become a biased platform manipulated by agenda-driven editors on many topics,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, ADL CEO, said in a statement.
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The ADL alleged that this group of 30 “bad-faith” editors “appeared to coordinate to change pages related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, downplaying Palestinian antisemitism, violence, and calls to destroy Israel while promoting criticism of Israel.” The report also alleged that there is widespread pro-Hamas bias in Arabic-language Wikipedia articles, violating the website’s commitment to neutrality.
For example, in an article about Zionism, the Jewish movement for self-determination in the Holy Land, Zionism was defined as “ethnocultural nationalist movement” that sought to “create a Jewish state in Palestine with as much land, as many Jews, and as few Palestinian Arabs as possible.”
In another article about Lebanese Palestinian Liberation Front terrorist Samir Kuntar, edits were made that removed his murder and terrorism conviction in Israel for an attack that killed five people, including two young children, and removed his U.S. terrorist designation.
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One of the “suspicious” editors allegedly removed references to Palestinian violence and antisemitism, deleting references to peer-reviewed scholarly articles that analyzed suicide bombings during the second intifada.
The ADL also contended that numerous changes were made to the Hamas Wikipedia article, which buried references to the organization as a terrorist group, deleted sections discussing rocket attacks on Israeli civilians and removed mention of the over 1,100 murders in the Hamas October 7 terrorist attack, among other changes.
The study claims that the 30 editors involved in these changes have made over 1 million edits to over 10,000 articles involving Israel and related topics, spending as much as eight hours per day editing articles.
The report, which analyzed data going all the way back to 2002, found that the cohorts’ efforts intensified between 2022 and 2024, and significantly ramped up following October 7, 2023.
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Arabic language Wikipedia was found to have widespread pro-Hamas bias in violation of Wikipedia’s policies, the report claimed. The Arabic language article on Hamas contains numerous instances glorifying the terrorist group and amplifying its message with few or no citations, the study alleged.
The ADL concluded with a series of recommendations for Wikipedia, search engines and the government, including advising Google and other AI makers to refrain from using Wikipedia as a source until the website takes steps to combat bias in its coverage of Israel.
The Wikimedia Foundation, which oversees Wikipedia, did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
