Wikipedia has just marked its 25th anniversary, a milestone that underscores its transformation from a quirky volunteer project into one of the internet's most influential forces.
With over 65 million articles across more than 300 languages, with nearly 15 billion monthly views worldwide — making it a top 10 global website — Wikipedia dominates search results, feeds AI systems like ChatGPT, and shapes the knowledge base for billions.
It doesn't just reflect what people know; it actively molds public perception, journalism, academia, and even artificial intelligence training data.
This immense power, however, comes with zero meaningful accountability.
Wikipedia's nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation oversees the world's largest online encyclopedia, written and edited by 250,000 anonymous volunteers.
Its design allows tiny cadres of editors to exert outsized control over content, sources, and narratives — without transparency or effective oversight.
Nowhere is this more evident — and dangerous — than in coverage of Zionism, Jewish history, Israel, and the Palestinian conflict.
A coordinated network of 30 to 40 volunteer editors has made over 850,000 edits on Israel-related pages, systematically distorting thousands of articles.
Their pattern: amplify every alleged Israeli misdeed while minimizing, omitting, or sanitizing Palestinian eliminationist ideology, terrorism, and antisemitism.
This is a deliberate effort to weaponize Wikipedia to delegitimize the Jewish state, reframing Zionism as settler colonialism or racism by presenting contested claims as established fact.
Search "Zionism" on Wikipedia, and the top suggestions include "Zionism as settler colonialism" and "Zionism from the Standpoint of Its Victims"— framing the Jewish national liberation movement through a hostile lens from the outset.
History is erased to sever the Jews’ 3,000-year ties to the Land of Israel: “Hellenistic Judea” becomes "Hellenistic Palestine"; a 16th-century account of Jewish immigration to the Holy Land vanishes. Jews are recast as a "cultural community" rather than a "nation" with indigenous rights to self-determination.
Gaza is routinely called an "open-air prison" or "ghetto," evoking apartheid analogies while ignoring Israel's security-driven blockade after Hamas's violent takeover and rocket attacks.
Post-October 7, 2023, the distortions intensified.
The main Hamas article now emphasizes its "political and social roles," downplaying its charter's call for Israel's destruction and its civilian-targeted terrorism; Oct.7 atrocities — including mass rape and butchery— are referred to as alleged, not fact, despite forensic evidence and survivor testimony.
Zionism's definition flipped from a movement seeking the restoration of the Jews to their homeland to the colonization of Palestine by European Jews — a one-sided Marxist-Islamist assault on Jewish indigeneity presented as fact.
Articles comparing Israel to Nazi Germany normalize the analogy through links to genocide and fascism, while the Mufti of Jerusalem's Hitler alliance is downplayed. In violation of Wikipedia mandates, editors swap reputable outlets for activist ones like Al Jazeera or PalestineRemembered.com.
Most egregiously, Wikipedia replaced its article, "Allegations of Gaza Genocide," with "Gaza Genocide," asserting that Israel is engaged in the "intentional and systematic destruction of the Palestinian people."
This libel is treated as fact, despite clear evidence that the IDF implemented more measures to prevent civilian casualties in Gaza than any other military in history.
Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales called it a breach of neutrality standards, labeling this article "particularly egregious" and one of the worst he's seen.
Yet it repeatedly appears in the site's "In the News" box, amplifying the accusation to millions daily.
The problem extends beyond English Wikipedia. Arabic Wikipedia, with hundreds of millions of views, glorifies Hamas, portrays Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar as a liberator, downplays Oct. 7 horrors, ignores the Nova festival massacre of 380 young Israelis, and frames the atrocity as a heroic blow against "occupation."
This isn't organic editing. Investigations by journalist Ashley Rindsberg, the Anti-Defamation League, and the World Jewish Congress expose the systematic distortions of the cadre of rogue editors.
Rindsberg reveals that 8,000 member-strong Tech for Palestine runs coordinated Wikipedia editing operations via the internet platform Discord, sidelining alternative perspectives, harassing and even banning dissenting editors, and training volunteers to evade detection — explicitly violating Wikipedia's rules against off-wiki canvassing and tag-teaming.
To Tech for Palestine, Wikipedia is "a battleground for narratives."
The situation has prompted congressional action. In August 2025, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, led by Reps. James Comer, R-Ky., and Nancy Mace, R-S.C., launched an investigation into "organized efforts" to manipulate Wikipedia, including anti-Israel bias, campaigns pushing antisemitism and anti-Western and pro-Kremlin propaganda.
Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger has endorsed the probe, stating there's "clearly massive support" for scrutiny.
Google's algorithm, which prioritizes Wikipedia near the top of results, supercharges this bias, lending it unearned legitimacy.
Wikipedia's self-policing has failed.
ArbCom, its supreme dispute-resolution body, bans some offenders, but the rogue network persists, dominating sensitive topics.
Efforts at correction are rebuffed; rather than maintaining neutrality, the platform is weaponized against balance.
Bias isn't limited to Israel — U.S. politics and other issues suffer too — but the Jewish state's coverage, amid surging global antisemitism, poses acute risks.
When the world's default "fact" source peddles one-sided propaganda, it warps reality for billions, fuels hatred, and undermines informed discourse.
Wikipedia's credibility rests on trust. That trust has eroded.
Ziva Dahl writes and lectures about U.S.-Israel relations, U.S. foreign and domestic policy, the Mideast, and American education. She has a Master of Arts degree in public law and government from Columbia University and an A.B. in political science from Vassar College. Read more Ziva Dahl Insder articles — Click Here Now.