Wikipedia, one of the most viewed sites on the internet, has hosted a page on “Gaza genocide” since July 3, 2024. Since Sept. 22, Wikipedia has linked to the “Gaza genocide” article, which accused Israel of war crimes, in an “in the news” section on its main page, which millions of people view daily.
The American Jewish Committee told JNS that Wikipedia is “elevating reckless and biased charges of genocide as fact,” and given how many genocide scholars disagree with that statement, the crowd-sourced encyclopedia “showcases how dangerous this can be.”
The nonprofit “previously raised concerns that Wikipedia is an information hub that is controlled by anonymous editors, who have their own biases, in a world in which fact and truth are now too easily distorted,” an AJC spokeswoman, who declined to be named, told JNS.
Vlad Khaykin, North America executive vice president of social impact and partnerships at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told JNS that Wikipedia has become an “echo chamber for propaganda” by stating in a neutral voice that there is “ongoing genocide” in Gaza.
“For decades, some of the world’s most despotic regimes and their enablers have waged a propaganda campaign to weaponize international law, and the genocide convention specifically, against Israel and its allies,” he said.
“That campaign has now insinuated itself into Wikipedia, transforming what ought to be a repository of human knowledge into, at least in this instance, an echo chamber for propaganda,” Khaykin told JNS.
Morton Klein, national president of the Zionist Organization of America, told JNS that Wikipedia “continues to be a bigoted, anti-Israel, anti-Jewish outlet and remains a thoroughly unreliable source for information.”
Prior to Sept. 21, the “Gaza genocide” article attributed what it said was Israel’s war crimes to human rights groups and academics. On Sept. 21, Wikipedia removed that attribution and instead stated the claims as fact, following a discussion on the matter since July 30 came to a vote. By a margin of more than 2:1, Wikipedia voters said that it was a matter of fact that Israel commits “genocide.”
“When it comes to so grave a matter as genocide, the world’s most consulted reference source has a special obligation to resist becoming a megaphone for disinformation,” Khaykin, of the Wiesenthal Center, told JNS.
“History shows that when one side in a conflict accuses the other of genocide, it often signals not the guilt of the accused but the genocidal intentions of the accuser,” he said.
The U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is probing Wikipedia over concerns of “potentially systematic efforts to advance antisemitic and anti-Israel information in Wikipedia articles related to conflicts with the State of Israel.”
