A new report from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) claims that at least 30 Wikipedia editors colluded in a scheme to flood the crowdsourced encyclopedia with "antisemitic narratives, anti-Israel bias and misleading information" amid the Israel-Hamas war.
Published Tuesday by the ADL's Center for Tech and Society, the report also alleges that "pro-Hamas perspectives" were prevalent across Arabic-language content on the site.
"The values of Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation reflect our commitment to integrity and accuracy, and we categorically condemn antisemitism and all forms of hate," a spokesperson for the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that operates Wikipedia, told the New York Post in a statement.
"Though our preliminary review of this report finds troubling and flawed conclusions that are not supported by the Anti-Defamation League's data, we are currently undertaking a more thorough and detailed analysis," the spokesperson said.
Wikimedia's spokesperson added that it was "unfortunate" the ADL did not contact the foundation before the report was released.
The antisemitic allegations seem to be the latest salvo in a long-running clash between the ADL and Wikimedia. The Washington Post reported that the nonprofit's editors branded the human rights group an "unreliable source of information" on the Israel-Hamas war last year.
In mid-January, the ADL welcomed the disciplinary action Wikipedia's arbitration board took against six "rogue" editors who the foundation said "spread malicious, false and biased information about Zionism and Israel across the platform."
While the questionable edits have reportedly increased since Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, the ADL's report claims that the alleged anti-Israel editors engaged in a yearslong campaign to delete references to antisemitism and overhaul pages on the Palestinian terror group.
According to the report, an NPR story about a young Palestinian flying a kite emblazoned with a swastika was deleted from a Wikipedia entry about Gaza protests, while colluding editors took down reports of sexual violence committed by Hamas from the site. Other "bad-faith editors" excised references to terrorist violence from pages on Hamas, the report stated.
Changes to Wikipedia's main Zionism page beginning in 2022 have reframed the founding of Israel in a negative way, the ADL claimed.
"Zionists wanted to create a Jewish state in Palestine with as much land, as many Jews, and as few Palestinian Arabs as possible," the page said.
Going forward, the ADL recommends that search engines deprioritize Wikipedia pages in their results and that the nonprofit create a program with experts on Israel. The report also recommends Wikipedia revisit its policies on sourcing standards, as well as bias and harassment.