Shocking ADL Report: Wikipedia editors rewrote Israel’s history, with vicious antisemitic slant

A bombshell report from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has thrust Wikipedia into the spotlight, claiming that over 30 editors have waged a years-long campaign to tilt content on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict toward what it calls “antisemitic narratives” and “pro-Hamas perspectives.” Released by the ADL’s Center for Tech and Society, the findings paint a picture of subtle but systematic edits—spanning over a million changes across 10,000 articles—that challenge the neutrality of one of the world’s most trusted online encyclopedias. For Israel, where history doubles as a battleground, the stakes couldn’t be higher.

The ADL traces the effort back to 2002, when the first of these “bad-faith editors” joined the platform, but says it surged after Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, which killed over 1,000 and ignited the latest war. The report accuses the group of scrubbing inconvenient facts—like reports of sexual violence by Hamas—and softening pages on the terror group, designated as such by the U.S., EU, and others. Wikipedia’s main Hamas entry, for instance, now buries that label beneath a lead framing it as a “political, social, and military organization” promoting “Palestinian nationalism in an Islamic context.” Wikipedia did not immediately respond to inquiries.

Specific edits tell a stark story. An NPR report about a Palestinian flying a swastika-kite during Gaza protests vanished from a related page. References to terrorists calling for Israel’s destruction were axed from an entry on Palestinian political violence. The page for Samir Kuntar—a Lebanese-Palestinian Liberation Front member convicted in the 1979 Nahariya attack that killed four, including a child—saw his murder conviction erased. Meanwhile, Arabic-language Wikipedia content allegedly carries a “pervasive pro-Hamas” slant, a claim the ADL ties to broader patterns across the site’s 300-plus language editions.

The Zionism page, a lightning rod since 2022, offers another flashpoint. Edits now cast Israel’s founding as a calculated grab for “as much land, as many Jews, and as few Palestinian Arabs as possible,” a shift the ADL calls a negative reframing of a movement rooted in Jewish self-determination. “This isn’t random—it’s coordinated,” an ADL spokesperson told Haaretz, pointing to the sheer volume of changes and their timing post-October 7.

This isn’t the ADL’s first tangle with Wikipedia. Last year, editors branded the ADL—an American Jewish advocacy group with a decades-long focus on combating hate—an “unreliable source” on the Israel-Gaza war, a move reported by The Washington Post that sparked outrage among its supporters. In January, Wikipedia’s arbitration board stepped in, banning six “suspicious editors” from certain topics after they allegedly bullied others into tweaking pages. The ADL cheered the move but now says it’s not enough, alleging a deeper rot in the site’s volunteer-driven ecosystem.

Wikipedia’s open-source model—where anyone can edit—has long been its strength and its Achilles’ heel. With 6 million articles in English alone, it’s a go-to for students, researchers, and casual readers, often topping Google searches. But that accessibility invites manipulation. Bloomberg recently chronicled “edit wars” over Gaza, where volunteers duel to slant pages, a microcosm of the ADL’s broader charge. The report doesn’t fault Wikipedia’s leadership but questions whether its loose oversight can thwart organized campaigns—especially on a topic as fraught as this.

The ADL’s demands are sweeping: it wants search giants like Google and Bing to downgrade Wikipedia in results, pressing the nonprofit to enlist Israel experts and overhaul policies on harassment, bias, and sourcing. It’s a tall order for a platform built on community governance, where editors fiercely guard their autonomy. The report nods to Wikipedia’s past: in 2021, it faced similar scrutiny over Holocaust-related edits, prompting internal reviews. Could this be a tipping point?

For Israel, the implications stretch beyond cyberspace. A nation forged through conflict and resilience, it’s no stranger to narrative wars—whether in UN halls or online forums. The ADL frames its push as a defense of truth, not a gag on dissent, noting that Wikipedia’s influence shapes perceptions for millions globally. Take the Hamas page shift: demoting its terror status might nudge a reader’s lens, however subtly. Or consider Kuntar’s scrubbed conviction—history rewritten with a few keystrokes.

The clash echoes wider tech debates. Mark Zuckerberg’s recent claim—that Biden officials once “screamed” at Meta to censor anti-vaxxers—hints at the pressures platforms face to police content. Wikipedia, though, isn’t a corporate giant; it’s a sprawling volunteer network, making accountability trickier. The ADL’s call for expert intervention risks clashing with that ethos, potentially alienating editors who see it as overreach.

What’s next? The nonprofit could tighten its rules—or dig in, arguing its processes self-correct over time. For now, the ADL’s report is a loud warning: in the digital age, even an encyclopedia isn’t neutral ground. As Israel navigates war and diplomacy, how its story is told online matters—and this battle over words is just heating up.

NY Post contributed to this article.