English-language Wikipedia editors concluded: Israel committing genocide in Gaza

South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the ICJ, the Hague, 12 January 2024

Refaella Goichman reports in Haaretz on 8 August 2024:

The effort to present the Israeli narrative in the face of worldwide criticism of the war in Gaza has been disappointing, for the most part, with the Israeli viewpoint failing to garner much support – to judge by the campus protests in the United States and in some European countries. The narrative war is also being waged on the most popular online site in the world – Wikipedia.

The English version of the virtual encyclopedia has become another important arena where supporters of the different sides are battling it out. And now Wikipedia’s editors have voted that it is a fact that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

On July 25, after a couple of months of debate, the Wikipedia entry “Allegations of genocide in the 2023 Israeli attack on Gaza” was changed to “Gaza genocide.” This was done despite the fact that the International Court of Justice in the Hague has not made an official ruling on the matter, in the wake of South Africa’s petition to the court alleging that Israel is committing or facilitating genocide in Gaza.

Opponents say the entry violates Wikipedia policy, is biased and is based on unreliable sources like the Gaza health ministry.  The Los Angeles-based Jewish Journal, which followed the Wikipedia discussion and vote, wrote that the editors who voted on this change claimed to be relying on an academic consensus based on statements of experts on genocide, human rights, human rights law and Holocaust historians.

The entry in question first went online in late December 2023, although there was already a similarly titled Wikipedia entry that went online a week after October 7, called “Palestinian allegations of genocide.” The content of the entries was not the same and they were composed by different editors. The entry that went online first was viewed thousands of times a day, but as soon as the name of the parallel entry was changed to “Gaza genocide,” the latter experienced a huge leap in its number of views, in part because Google places the Wikipedia page at the top of its search engine results when searching for the words “Gaza genocide”.

Data regarding Wikipedia usage published by analyst Gil Feldman show that, when comparing the two identical entries, from the start of the war until May this year, the entry about Palestinian allegations of genocide was viewed between 90 and 55,000 times a day. In May, the discussion over changing the name of the second entry began, at which point that entry started to gain in popularity. By July, the “Gaza genocide” entry was regularly getting 55,000 views per day, at the expense of the similar entry about Palestinian allegations which saw a plunge in the number of views.

At first, the “Gaza genocide” page relied on just five sources of information, including a report by dozens of UN experts on the subject, which itself was based on reports by the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza, a Reuters report on the killing of journalists in Gaza, and an Indian site called Outlook, which alleged that a genocide was occurring in Gaza.

The Jewish Journal criticized the entry for its lack of balance in solely quoting sources that accuse Israel of genocide. In its report, it cites different voices from the debate among the entry’s editors, including some who objected to the name change. The opponents argued that the entry violates Wikipedia policy, that it is biased, that it purposely does not present claims by scholars or sources that do not believe a genocide is happening in Gaza, and that it is based on unreliable sources like the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry. They also pointed out that Wikipedia policy bars the use of entry names that are not neutral.

Since the entry was first published, 1,124 changes have been made by dozens of editors and the entry has expanded vastly. It contains references to activists, politicians and celebrities who have expressed anti-Israel messages such as climate activist Greta Thunberg, Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib and the rapper Macklemore, who wrote a song called “Hind’s Hall” inspired by a 6-year-old Gazan girl who was killed by Israel Defense Forces fire.

In addition to the academic sources that are critical of Israel and allege that the country is systematically committing genocide, the entry also quotes an array of Israeli government officials, who since the start of the war have come out with statements calling to hurt Gazans. Most prominent are Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich (Religious Zionism) and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir (Otzma Yehudit), who even before the war were saying things like “Huwara should be wiped out,” in reference to a Palestinian town in the West Bank that was rampaged by settlers following the killing of two Israelis there.

At the start of the war, it seemed like Israel’s coalition members were vying with one another to see who could make the most extreme statements, supplying quotes that would eventually be cited in South Africa’s suit against Israel in the Hague. Other politicians who have spoken about killing Palestinians are Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu (Otzma Yehudit), who in November said that “a nuclear bomb should be dropped on Gaza”; another Otzma Yehudit MK, Yitzhak Kroizer, who called for Gaza “to be flattened;” and Agriculture Minister and security cabinet member Avi Dichter (Likud), who called for a “Nakba in Gaza,” referring to the mass exodus and expulsion of Palestinians that occurred in 1948-49 with the establishment of the state of Israel.

Another claim directed at Israel is that it is deliberately starving displaced Palestinians in Gaza, and has been denying them access to water. The Wikipedia entry says this claim was corroborated when Foreign Minister Israel Katz (Likud), who was the energy minister at the time, ordered Gaza’s water supply be cut off at the start of the war, and later said that “Gaza will be without electricity and water and fuel until the hostages are returned.” Other Israeli officials quoted in the entry include President Isaac Herzog, Economy Minister Nir Barkat and Major General (res.) Giora Eiland.

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