Wikipedia's page on Zionism is partly edited by an anti-Zionist - investigation

Wikipedia’s page on “Zionism” is being partly edited by a user with strongly anti-Zionist views, The Jerusalem Post discovered on Monday.

The anonymous user, DMH223344, has re-framed the content of the page so that Zionism is defined as a colonialist movement, and has cited multiple anti-Israel sources when providing evidence for the claims.

Actor and activist Roi Dolev first shone light on the issue in a post to his Instagram, after researching DMH223344.

At the time of writing, when googled, the Wikipedia definition of Zionism is that “Zionists wanted to create a Jewish state in Palestine with as much land, as many Jews, and as few Palestinians as possible” something that was defined in part by DMH223344.

The Post found that the user was suspended on October 9 2024 from editing the Zionism page, “for violating the one-revert rule at Zionism (revert 1 & revert 2) after previous warnings.”

The one revert rule is Wikipedia’s ban on editing wars, which happens when multiple editors revert and un-revert each other’s work.

According to Callanecc, the user that initiated the suspension, DMH223344 had “already been warned twice in a few months about edit warring and 1RR.”

Changes to the page

Callanecc wrote that they expected DMH223344 to be “very careful” when editing this topic area due to previous warnings, however, that “does not seem to be the case.”

Previously, this user changed the line “The Jewish people are an ethno-religious group and nation” to “Zionism views Jews as an ethno-religious group and nation.” This change was later reverted by another editor.

THE PAGE on Zionism has changed significantly over the last few months.

On July 3, the first paragraph read:

“Zionism is an ethnic or ethnocultural nationalist movement that emerged in Europe in the late 19th century and aimed for the re-establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, a region corresponding to the Land of Israel in Jewish tradition, an area of central importance in Jewish history, religion, and identity.”

As of Monday, the first line reads “Zionism is an ethno-cultural nationalist movement that emerged in Europe in the late 19th century and aimed for the establishment of a Jewish state through the colonization of a land outside Europe.”

In September, the ADL called the new definition “historically inaccurate, derogatory & erases or misconstrues the experiences of millions of Jews, including Ashkenazi, Mizrahi, Sephardic, African and others.”

Furthermore, the previous edit spoke of Zionism as the ideology of “supporting the protection and development of Israel as a Jewish state, in particular, a state with a Jewish demographic majority, and has been described as Israel’s national or state ideology.”

This has since been replaced with “Zionists wanted to create a Jewish state in Palestine with as much land, as many Jews, and as few Palestinians as possible.”

DMH223344 also added the following section: “The Zionist claim to Palestine was based on the notion that the Jews’ historical right to the land outweighed that of the Arabs. In Zionism, the dangers and limitations associated with minority status in Europe meant that Jews had an existential need for a state where they would constitute a demographic majority.”

Looking at this user’s talk page – the area where Wikipedia editors discuss issues with each other – several comments indicate the editor’s anti-Zionist views.

For example, DMH223344 said that “the characterization of Zionism as settler-colonialism is not necessarily a criticism.”

The user also references the Palestinian National Charter (1964) in the same discussion, which reads “Zionism is a colonialist movement in its inception, aggressive and expansionist in its goal, racist in its configurations, and fascist in its means and aims.”

OF THE sources cited by DMH223344 on the Zionism page, the majority are by Palestinian or anti-Zionist historians.

These include the following: Nakba and Survival: The Story of Palestinians Who Remained in Haifa and the Galilee, 1948–1956 by Adel Manna; The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017 by Rashid Khalidi; Settler-colonial citizenship: conceptualizing the relationship between Israel and its Palestinian citizens by Nadim N. Rouhana; and The Palestine Nakba: Decolonising History, Narrating the Subaltern, Reclaiming Memory by Nur Masalha.

DMH223344, whose account was created shortly after October 7, 2023, almost exclusively edits pages relating to Israel and Zionism.

On the page “Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” this user added the lines “Israel, along with the United States, and the European Union, refer to any use of force by Palestinian groups as terrorist and criminal. This is in contrast to the consensus in international law which allows for Palestinians, as a people under illegal military occupation, to use lethal force against Israeli military targets and installations.”

Reportedly, following the raising of concerns about the definition of Zionism, Wikipedia turned off the ability for anyone to edit its entry on Zionism unless their accounts are at least 30 days old and have 500 or more edits to their name.

DMH223344, who to date has 2,567 and whose account was made on November 15, 2023, therefore has special editing access.

THIS IS not the first instance of Wikipedia editors being accused of skewing the narrative against Israel, Jews, and Zionism.

The Washington Examiner raised concerns about the same page on Zionism on September 19, specifically an edit that called into question the Jewishness of Ashkenazi Jews, calling it “dubious.”

One of the references is to Nadia Abu El Haj who says: “There is a ‘problem’ regarding the origins of the Ashkenazim, which needs resolution: Ashkenazi Jews, who seem European – pheno-typically, that is – are the normative center of world Jewry.”

“The Ashkenazi Jew is the most dubious Jew, the Jew whose historical and genealogical roots in ancient Palestine are most difficult to see and perhaps thus to believe – in practice, although clearly not by definition.”

Abu El Haj, a Columbia professor, has a history of anti-Zionist research and works, including her 2001 book Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society.

Aside from the Zionism page, a 2023 paper by Jan Grabowski and Shira Klein found that in the last decade, a group of committed Wikipedia editors have been promoting a “skewed version of history, one touted by right-wing Polish nationalists, which whitewashes the role of Polish society in the Holocaust and bolsters stereotypes about Jews.”

In September, Wikipedia changed its page “Allegations of genocide in the 2023 Israeli attack on Gaza” to “Gaza genocide” removing any notion that the genocide claims might be false.

In June 2024, Wikipedia’s editors voted to declare the Anti-Defamation League “generally unreliable” on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, adding it to a list of banned and partially banned sources.

As a website, Wikipedia attracted more than 92 billion visits in 2023 alone, meaning it was only outperformed by Google, YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram.

A petition has since been created by Roi Dolev, to call upon the Wikimedia Foundation and the editorial community to “address significant bias and unfair representation in the current Wikipedia article on Zionism.”