Wikipedia’s Islamist Vandals
23rd November 2024
A recent Pirate Wiresexposé by Ashley Rindsberg about the goings-on at Wikipedia caught my eye the other day, and has held my attention ever since. I was familiar with Rindsberg’s work, notably his incredible historical critique of the New York Times, The Gray Lady Winked: How The New York Times’s Misreporting, Distortions & Fabrications Radically Alter History (2021), so I knew this reporting was something to take seriously. However, I did not realize how much it actually related to the work I’ve been doing with my podcast History Impossiblefor the past six years, namely with regard to Hajj Amin al-Husseini, a historical figure who has, perhaps unfortunately, become something of the show’s mascot.
In his piece, Rindsberg detailed a coordinated effort behind the scenes to engage in deliberate actions that compromise the integrity of the encyclopedia, what the Wikipedia community refers to as “vandalism.” This case involved about 40 editors working on behalf of a group called Tech for Palestine, a Discord group of about 8,000 members. According to the article, they “worked to delegitimize Israel, present radical Islamist groups in a favorable light, and position fringe academic views on the Israel-Palestine conflict as mainstream over past years.” Once their actions started coming to light, the rogue editors immediately tried covering their tracks. This suggests to me that they recognized their actions were not only dishonest, but also completely violated the spirit of a site like Wikipedia.1
Many of the examples reported by Rindsberg are troubling, including changes to omit any mention of Hamas’s 1988 charter — a document that was a little less than, shall we say, “diplomatic” in its wording of their own Jewish Question. Lest we forget, the original charter both explicitly referred to Jews as “Nazis” and glowingly cited the story of the Prophet Muhammad being told by Allah to kill any Jew hiding behind a tree or a rock in order to bring about the Day of Judgment. In 2017, Hamas leadership took a page from the Hitler handbook of never admitting anything on paper and changed their charter to reflect a hatred of Zionists rather than spelling out “Jews.”
Imagine how peaceful the world would be if the Religion of Peace didn’t exist.