Wikipedia warfare

Wikipedia UnReliable Sources: In the “Preemptive Strike” in the Israel Edit War, The Winners Were… the Editors

“Wikipedia needs to wake up to the reality that this is a systemic problem across the platform that needs immediate action. There is still a lot more that must be done to ensure that Wikipedia can live up to its policy around the encyclopedia holding a neutral point of view.”—Jonathan Greenblatt ADL CEO and National Director, Jan. 17, 2025

In June 2024, a corps of Wikipedia editors voted to add the Anti-Defamation League to a list of banned and partially banned sources, declaring them to be “generally unreliable” on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

More than 40 Jewish groups appealed to the Board of the Wikimedia Foundation to step in and reverse this decision.

“Fundamentally, Wikipedia is stripping the Jewish community of the right to defend itself from the hatred that targets our community,” wrote the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, of which the ADL is a member. “We urge you to immediately launch an investigation into this decision and the motivations behind it and to start the process for administrative reconsideration.”

The response they received was weak, unresponsive, and it denied any responsibility the Foundation might have for the actions of Wikipedia editors and their effects.

Maggie Dennis, Wikimedia Foundation vice president of community resilience and sustainability, responded that “neither the Board or the Foundation make content decisions on Wikipedia. A community of volunteers makes these decisions subject to Wikipedia’s terms of use.”

According to Asaf Elia-Shalev, the Jewish Telegraph Agency’s senior reporter, the Wikipedia editors’ decision “means that one of the most prominent and longstanding Jewish advocacy groups in the United States—and one historically seen as the leading U.S. authority on antisemitism—is now grouped together with the National Inquirer, Newsmax, and Occupy Democrats as a source of propaganda or misinformation in the eyes of the online encyclopedia.” He also warned that dozens of Wikipedia editors were pushing for the ADL to no longer be cited “for factual information on antisemitism as well because [the ADL] acts primarily as a pro-Israel organization and tends to label legitimate criticism of Israel as antisemitism.”

In a written statement, the ADL called the decision by Wikipedia the result of a “campaign to delegitimize the ADL” and claimed that editors opposing the ban “provided point by point refutations, grounded in factual citations, to every claim made, but apparently facts no longer matter.”

In October 2024, Pirate WiresAshley Rindsberg exposed a cabal among Wikipedia editors who, he claimed, hijacked the site into “pushing pro-Palestinian propaganda,” even removing any mention in Wikipedia’s Hamas article that the killing of Jews and the destruction of Israel are part of Hamas’ 1988 charter. The same faction apparently voted 3:1 to cease using “Hamas-run” as a descriptor when mentioning the Gaza Health Ministry.

In January 2025, the Wikipedia arbitration committee finally took disciplinary action against multiple editors based on a massive effort by anti-Israel editors to spread misinformation and hate across the platform. 

ADL’s Greenblatt responded by calling on Wikipedia to undo the rogue actions of Wikipedia editors and admins, stating that the online encyclopedia “needs to wake up to the reality that this is a systemic problem across the platform that needs immediate action. There is still a lot more that must be done to ensure that Wikipedia can live up to its policy around the encyclopedia holding a neutral point of view….it’s worth noting that several of the chief instigators of the campaign against ADL are among those now facing topic bans or outright bans for their behavior.

“In light of this, it is now imperative for Wikipedia to begin work immediately to undo the harm caused by these rogue but prolific editors who literally have wreaked havoc across the platform, causing untold harm to potentially hundreds of entries about Israel, the Oct. 7 massacre, Zionism and topics relating to antisemitism.”

We might add that it is time for Wikipedia to prevent such collusion by high-ranking editors to create such discriminatory and biased activity against any religion.


Do you agree with Greenblatt that Wikipedia’s handling of Judaism is “a systemic problem across the platform that needs immediate action?” Do you have any other examples of Wikipedia editors or admins or policies marginalizing religions, silencing the voice, or covert or overt religious discrimination or intolerance? Please send any information you have to wrn-info@proton.me.


We want to hear from you! If you are a religious leader, a parishioner, or a Wikipedia editor who has come across biased and skewed religious coverage in Wikipedia, we encourage you to submit an article or a write-up of how Wikipedia has misrepresented religion; send this to our editors at wrn-info@proton.me. Your insights are very valuable for ensuring accurate and comprehensive information is available to the public.

Photo credits: War Battlefield by mohamed hassan via Stockvault, CC0Wikipedia Logo Puzzle from Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.