Wikipedia could ban eight editors accused of anti-Israel bias indefinitely

Wikipedia’s arbitration committee recently announced disciplinary action against several editors over efforts to spread misinformation about the Israel-Palestine conflict on the open encyclopedia. 

Eight editors will receive an indefinite ban from editing any articles related to Israel-Palestine over their actions: the editors were identified by their online handles used in editing the site: “Selfstudier,” “Nableezy,” “Nishidani,” “Levivich,” “Iskandar323,” “Makeandtoss,” “BilledMammal” and “AndreJustAndre.” 

Wikipedia’s Arbitration Committee (ArbCom), is the site’s highest dispute resolution committee, and only handles editor behavior, not site content. Members of the committee are elected by the community of Wikipedia editors and serve for a two-year period. 

The committee accused the editors of engaging in “disruptive behavior,” including non-neutral editing, edit warring, and incivility. 

The eight editors were featured in a piece on the website Pirate Wires in October 2024, which detailed some of their anti-Israel editing behavior aimed at whitewashing Hamas behavior, pushing a pro-Palestinian narrative while making Israel appear in a negative light in most aspects related to the conflict. 

The Pirate Wires investigation found that a huge, coordinated campaign over several years and involving far more Wikipedia editors than the eight who have been targeted for disciplinary action, has been working to shift the narrative around the Israel-Palestine conflict. Pirate Wires also demonstrated that despite the action against these editors, most of the bad faith edits are still active on Wikipedia. 

While the group of editors worked together to change the narrative around the Israel-Palestine conflict, many of the editors also targeted Jewish interest groups, such as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), for smear campaigns, intended to raise doubts and suspicions about the groups. 

ADL’s CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement, “We’re pleased that the Wikipedia arbitration board has taken disciplinary action against some editors who, in our view, have spread malicious, false and biased information about Zionism and Israel across the platform.” 

Greenblatt also called on Wikipedia to do more to “undo the harm” caused by bad faith edits to the site’s content. 

“It’s worth noting that several of the chief instigators of the campaign against ADL are among those now facing topic bans or outright bans for their behavior. In light of this, it is now imperative for Wikipedia to begin work immediately to undo the harm caused by these rogue but prolific editors who literally have wreaked havoc across the platform, causing untold harm to potentially hundreds of entries about Israel, the Oct. 7 massacre, Zionism and topics relating to antisemitism,” Greenblatt continued. 

The editor of the blog “The Wikipedia Flood,” however, said the topic bans are barely enough, especially given the large number of editors involved, and the fact that so many of those involved were not part of the disciplinary action. 

The Wikipedia Flood blog posted its own reaction in a piece titled, “Wikipedia's 'Arbitrators' Prove There Are No Adults in the Room—Only Kangaroos.” In it, the editor argues that the arbitration committee did not appear to grasp the seriousness of the coordinated efforts to edit the articles with an anti-Israel bias, and noted that the arbitrators demonstrated an incompetence in reading the evidence provided in the case. 

The blog concluded that “Wikipedia's highest tribunal is both unwilling and unable to curb highly organized propagandists who infiltrate the site to push pro-Hamas and antisemitic propaganda.” 

Even Greenblatt appeared to recognize the need for further action, commenting, “As we have said before, Wikipedia needs to wake up to the reality that this is a systemic problem across the platform that needs immediate action. There is still a lot more that must be done to ensure that Wikipedia can live up to its policy around the encyclopedia holding a neutral point of view.”