A US-based media organisation, Pirate Wires, has unearthed how Wikipedia is being exploited by pro-Hamas and pro-Hezbollah editors to distort the ongoing Palestine-Israel conflict and downplay the acts of terror perpetrated by Islamists against the Jews.
Pirate Wires found that at least 40 Wikipedia editors are actively involved in vandalising ‘Palestine-Israel Articles (PIA)’ and altering public perception about the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, which broke out on 7th October 2023.
The sinister objectives include delegitimising the Jewish State, portraying Islamic terror outfits Hamas and Hezbollah in a positive light and subtly mainstreaming anti-Semitic views through a concerted effort.
NEW WIKIPEDIA INVESTIGATION: How Wikipedia’s Pro-Hamas Editors Hijacked the Israel-Palestine Narrative
— Pirate Wires (@PirateWires) October 24, 2024
• A seemingly coordinated campaign led by around 40 Wikipedia editors has worked to delegitimize Israel, present radical Islamist groups in a favorable light, and position… pic.twitter.com/Dfuq0sEcX5
Although Wikipedia advocates a ‘Neutral Point of View (NPOW)’ in theory and bars ‘Gaming the System’, ‘Tag Teaming’ and ‘Canvassing’, the pro-Islamist editors were able to demonise the Jewish State of Israel in a targeted fashion.
Pirate Wires stated, “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,” it emphasised.
Wikipedia ‘editors’ behind vandalising Palestine-Israel articles
During the course of their investigation, Pirate Wires found that an 8000-member Discord group dubbed ‘Tech for Palestine (TFP) has been at the helm of this information warfare.
The group operated between 6th February and 3rd September this year and distorted atleast 112 articles in a concerted manner. Based on its vandalism of Wikipedia pages, the group even attempted to coerce British Parliamentarians to change their positions on Israel and the war against Hamas in Gaza ahead of the July elections.
“The plan called for scraping data on visits by MPs to Israel and Israel-related donor information, to create a dedicated Wikipedia article using the data to inform ‘voters to put pressure ahead of the next elections’, Pirate Wires stated. It identified one of the Wikipedia editors and a member of TFP as ‘Iskandar 323’
In the words of the US-based media organisation, “Far from a lone wolf, however, Iskandar is part of a group of editors that uses coordinated “swarm” tactics that, taken together, invert Wikipedia’s founding vision, turning the site’s perceived neutrality and authority into an attack vector that can be hijacked to advance ideological aims at a mass scale.”
Between January 2022 and September 2024, ‘Iskandar 323’ made a whopping 12,000 edits to PIA articles. In the same period, an editor who goes by the name ‘Selfstudier’ made more than 15,000 edits.
Other members of ‘Tech for Palestine’ also made several edits to propagate Hamas and Hezbollah’s propaganda in the grab of disseminating information. These include:
- CarmenEsparzaAmoux – 8,353 edits
- Makeandtoss – 8,074 edits
- Nableezy – 6,414 edits
- Nishidani – 5,879 edits
- Onceinawhile – 4,760 edits
- Zero0000 – 2,561 edits.
“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,” Pirate Wires noted.
While describing the modus operandi of TFP, the media organisation added, “The shifting of language, the torturing of settled definitions, and positioning fringe academic theory as mainstream — an approach developed by the radical left, in concert with global Islamist movements, in the wake of 9/11, when the attacks put Islamism on the moral back foot.”
The Wikipedia editors employed tech modalities such as strategy planning sessions, ticket creations, and group audio “office hour” chats to achieve their ulterior motives.
They avoided detection by working in small groups on articles and aiding one another in case of pushback from neutral editors, not associated with TFP.
Although ‘Tech for Palestine’ was founded by Paul Biggar, the two main coordinators of the 8000-member-Discord group were Samira and Samer.
They coordinated with other members to vandalise Palestine Israel Articles (PIA) in a concerted manner. They recruited volunteers, conducted formal orientation, dealt with issues of troubleshooting, work on ideation to carry out digital information warfare.
However, the real work was guided by the in-house expert and veteran Wikipedia editor ‘Ivana.’ Pirate Wires stated, “Their activities ranged from editing celebrity articles by adding pro-Palestine statements they made to creating new articles out of whole cloth, like a proposed article called Palestine: The Solution.”
“They also put special emphasis on articles concerning sexual violence perpetrated by Hamas on October 7, with Ïvana questioning the veracity of reports of rape from that day, while adding to other articles claims that Israeli soldiers raped Palestinians,” it added.
Impact made by TFP on Wikipedia articles about Jews and Israel
Many members of the ‘Tech for Palestine’ Discord group, who also happen to be Wikipedia editors, vandalised several pages concerning Jews and the State of Israel.
For instance, the editor ‘Iskandar 323’ removed ‘land of Israel’ from a reference to the origin of Jewish people. He also changed the short description of the article on ‘Jews’ from ‘Ethno-religious group and nation from the Levant’ to ‘Ethno-religious group and cultural community.’
By removing reference to ‘nation’, the pro-Hamas Wikipedia Editor conveyed that the ethno-religious group did not necessarily require a separate nation of their own. Additionally, he downplayed the terror antecedents of Hamas and its resolve to eradicate Jews and Israel.
‘Iskandar 323’ shrewdly omitted reference to the 1988 charter of Hamas from its Wikipedia article, a significant change that prevents a user from knowing about the true anti-semitic nature of the Islamist outfit.
“He removed mention of Hamas’ 1988 charter in at least three other articles,” noted Pirate Wires. Additionally, the Wikipedia editor removed 22000 characters from a ‘critical section’ of an article about the controversial Amnesty International.
He also deleted a 1000-word-passage criticising its stance on Israel. In one case, ‘Iskandar 323’ removed a paragraph critical of Iran’s Islamic regime from the Wikipedia article titled ‘History of Israel’ article.
‘Iskandar323’ collaborated to remove human rights violation from articles concerning Iranian officials. The notorious editor also deleted an account of the 16th-century immigration of Jews to Israel.
He also whitewashed Amin Al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem from 1920s and 1950s who allied with Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. ‘Iskandar 323’ was helped by ‘Zero0000’ and ‘Nishidani’ to remove negative content about the radical Mufti from his Wikipedia page.
‘Nishidani’ also worked with another member of TFP to paint parallels between ‘Zionism’ and ‘Nazism,’ a ploy often used by Islamists to rationalise their calls for extermination of Jews for being potential Nazis.
Another Wikipedia editor dubbed ‘Mhhossein’ vandalised the page concerning the anti-hijab protests following the death of Mahsa Amini in Iran. He corrupted the page by adding dubious information in support of the Islamic Republic Party (IRP).
According to Pirate Wires, one TFP member named ‘Nableezy’ is a proud supporter of Hezbollah. He has worked consistently to remove any references to terrorism attributed to the Iran-backed Islamic terrorist organisation. He has also peddled anti-Semitism through his malicious edits and deliberate vandalism of Wikipedia pages pertaining to Israel.
The members of ‘Tech for Palestine’, serving as editors of Wikipedia, were able to exploit Google’s preference for the free encyclopedia to distinctly feature articles on Zionism with the ‘knowledge panel’ of the search engine.
The said Wikipedia article is edited by the members of TFP but gives the false impression to a visitor that the knowledge panel is based on information vetted by Google and not Wikipedia editors.
The aftermath of ‘Tech for Palestine’
Deep down, some of the Wikipedia editors belonging to ‘Tech for Palestine’ knew that they were flouting Wikipedia norms about ‘Neutral Point of View (NPOW)’, ‘Gaming the System’, ‘Tag Teaming’ and ‘Canvassing.’
Earlier this year, a researcher published a detailed report on Tech for Palestine in a blog titled ‘The Wikipedia Flood.’ The report was titled “How Pro-Hamas Operatives Collaborate to Rig Wikipedia.”
After his expose followed by that of a magazine called ‘Jewish Insider’, the in-house expert at TFP aka Ivana deleted all her chats from the Discord channels as well as the Wikipedia talk pages and Sandboxes staging pages created by her.
In September, the group locked down the ‘TFP Wikipedia Collaboration’ Discord channel following revelations of concerted vandalism of Wikipedia pages.
Wikipedia and anti-India propaganda
In a detailed dossier prepared in September 2024, OpIndia found that Wikipedia is not a free, editorial intervention-free encyclopaedia which relies on the voluntary work of thousands of unpaid, passionate volunteers across the globe, as claimed by the Wikimedia Foundation.
Larry Senger, the co-founder of Wikipedia has categorically stated that Wikipedia has a pronounced Left bias. In several interviews and talks, he has spoken extensively about how Wikipedia skews the scale of balance, leading to the information being an inaccurate representation of reality, ridden with Left bias.
Wikimedia Foundation has intimate financial connections with the clandestine Tides Foundation, which is accused of funding the pro-Hamas protests in US Universities along with George Soros. Wikimedia and Tides Foundation also fund several organisations which specifically work against the interest of India and undermine its sovereignty on various levels.
Connections between the Wikimedia Foundation and Tides Foundation have been found with dubious organisations like Hindus For Human Rights, Equality Labs, Art+Feminism, Access Now, the Hindenburg hitjobs against Indian industrialists and others.
In India, the Wikimedia Foundation has no presence. The presence they had in the form of a registered society was closed in 2019.
Despite folding in India, the Wikimedia Foundation not only collects lakhs from India in the form of donations but also funds NGOs in India which furthers the business interest of the Wikimedia Foundation. All of these organisations funded by the Wikimedia Foundation and Tides Foundation are Left organisations.
As far as the content on Wikipedia is concerned, it is found in this research that a small group of editors and administrators skew the content in India, including one editor who has been booked in the state of Manipur for spreading disaffection and creating strife.
The editors often stonewall attempts to add inconvenient facts and a different perspective to the Wikipedia articles.
Further, there is a specific anti-Hindu and anti-India bias which is perpetrated by the editors, reflected in the content which defines the subjects due to the partnership between Google and Wikimedia Foundation.
