The attack, in which gunmen thought to be a father and son shot and killed 15 people at a Chanukah celebration on Bondi Beach in Sydney on Sunday, is widely described as a terror attack. But editors on Wikipedia are debating whether that phrase is appropriate or it should just be called a “shooting.”
The site’s current page about the incident refers to a “shooting” in the headline and, in the body of the article, to a “terrorist mass shooting.”
Editors on the site, who are volunteer and often unnamed, are also reportedly trying to keep the names of the shooters out of the article. Law enforcement have said that the shooters were inspired by ISIS.
On the “talk” section of the page, editors on Wikipedia are debating whether a sufficient number of sources has called the attack “terror” and if the suspected gunmen, one of whom is dead, are public figures who ought to be named.
Deborah Lipstadt, former U.S. special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism and professor of modern Jewish history and Holocaust studies at Emory University, stated that if editors are actually trying to characterize the attack merely as a “shooting” on Wikipedia, then that’s “hardly a surprise.
“Just Wikipedia being true to itself when it concerns Israel, Jews, antisemitism,” she stated.
“Chanukah should be celebrated with oil lighting, not gaslighting,” added David May, research manager and senior research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
