Wikipedia in Arabic: A hotbed for bigotry, misinformation, and bias - investigative report

"The Protocols of the Elders of Zion… is a leaked document whose authenticity has been disputed between those who say it is a true document and those who say it is a fake document."

Thus reads the first paragraph of Arabic Wikipedia's entry of one of the most famous and vile blood libels of history, purposely leaving room for the thought that the forged work is, in fact, "leaked" and "real." For comparison, the first paragraph of the parallel English entry stresses that the Protocols are "a fabricated text"; the German version focuses on its antisemitic nature and the fact that it's based on fictional characters; the French entry calls it "a text invented from scratch" and a forgery; and the Persian entry deems it "a fake and anti-Semitic document."

Many reports in the past couple of weeks revolved around the battle waged against Israel on Wikipedia and the struggle for a fair depiction of the Jewish people and the Jewish state on the world's largest free encyclopedia, stressing the English version of the free encyclopedia. These include exposés showcasing editors who worked actively to change the neutral tone of dozens of entries such as Zionism, Israel, the Balfour Declaration, and even the October 7 Massacre - exposed by Pirate Wires and WikiBias, among others.

Before and After: Two images showing the appropriation of the @Wikipedia 'Zionism' article, highlighting how edits have skewed it toward an anti-Zionist narrative based on manipulation and misinformation. It’s high time for the @Wikimedia Foundation to uphold its commitment to… pic.twitter.com/T3FNAfWN2E

— WikiBias (@WikiBias2024) November 1, 2024

However, as the endeavors to dismiss the Jewish narratives ensue on the English pages, the Arabic version of Wikipedia seems to have its own rules. From misinformation and historical assertions to biased and non-professional writing to outright antisemitism and even self-contradictory entries topped with heavy censorship and limited editing ability, Arabic Wikipedia seems to have it all. The Jerusalem Post conducted a series of investigations and interviews, identifying quirks and issues both on the content and the operative level.

The content: examples aplenty

The impact of bias on the Arabic version of Wikipedia is evident at first sight. The iconic spherical logo of Wikipedia on its Arabic page is tainted with the colors of the Palestinian flag. A black banner has adorned every page on the Arabic version of Wikipedia for the past year, since shortly after the October 7 Massacre took place. The banner says, "In solidarity with the rights of the Palestinian people, no to genocide in Gaza ...no to killing civilians, no to targeting hospitals and schools ...no to misleading and double standards. Stop the war ... and spread just and comprehensive peace."

These obvious political statements are at odds with Wikipedia's façade of neutrality and objectivity. But the banner and logo are only the tip of the iceberg, as browsing through different entries relating to Jews and Israel can be a shaking experience of misinformation, generalizations, and bigotry.

Examples of this vary. An entry named Solomon's Temple reads: "It is said that Solomon's Temple is located under Jerusalem, and that is why the Jews wanted a few years ago to demolish Al-Aqsa Mosque to search for Solomon's Temple underneath it," offering no footnotes or references to this generalizing and demonizing passage.

A similar demonizing generalization written in a non-professional manner appears in a passage in the entry regarding Hebron (Al-Khalil in Arabic), where it states: "The Jews continue their claims, claiming that Moses extracted [Joseph's] ark from the depths of the Nile and carried it with him, and that "Joshua bin Nun" buried it in a cave in Habara (Hebron). With this claim and others, they want, through Zionism, to arouse people's religious sentiment and create a fictitious history out of nothing."

On the issue of ahistorical assertions, an example can be found in the entry on Al-Aqsa Mosque relies on religious Hadith literature (oral traditions dating to the 7-8 centuries) as empirical historical evidence, claiming for instance, that "it is not known exactly when Al-Aqsa Mosque was first built, but it was mentioned in the hadiths of the Prophet Muhammad that it was built forty years after the construction of the Kaaba… After the era of Adam, news of the mosque was cut off due to the lack of history in that period."

The same entry mentions the arson attempt against Al-Aqsa in 1969, attributing the crime to "an extremist Australian Jew" – even though the arsonist Denis Michael Rohan was not Jewish. Notedly, the entry regarding Rohan does mention his Christian affiliation, thus contradicting the content of the Al-Aqsa entry.

In the same context, the entry then accuses Israel of obstructing attempts at putting out the fire, proceeding to attribute a rather dubious and improbable quote to former Israeli prime minister Golda Meir, also without a relevant reference, alleging that she said: "I did not sleep that night imagining that the Arabs would enter Israel in droves from every direction, but when morning came, and nothing happened, I realized that we can do whatever we want, for this is a sleeping nation." Oddly, the writer of the entry seemed to be aware of the bizarreness of this "quote," quickly adding: "Despite the skepticism about the veracity of this statement, its reality far outweighs its importance, whether it is true or not. If Meir did not say it, the events still tell it in a clearer way."

Still, in the context of Jerusalem, an entry titled "The Arabness of Jerusalem through the ages" claims that the city was established by the "Arab Jebusites," accusing King David of "occupying the city from the Canaanites." Needless to say, the ancient Canaanite people were not Arab.

Misinformation and biased writing also appear on more modern topics. For instance, the October 7 Massacre appears under Hamas's given name (Toufan Al-Aqsa, or Operation Flood of Al-Aqsa), which provided alleged "contextualization" and justifications for the massacre, and in which Hamas militants are mentioned as infiltrating "settlements," rather than communities, towns or cities.

The Al-Ahli hospital "massacre" still appears as a valid entry alongside its exaggerated number of 500 "martyrs" announced mere moments after the explosion, claiming that the videos showing rocket misfires and the morning after scenes nowhere reminiscent of a large-scale multi-casualty event are nothing short of Israeli propaganda. 

In this case, an entire entry named "Israeli propaganda during Operation Flood of Al-Aqsa" exists, dedicated to "debunking" stories of rape for example, also featuring a paragraph claiming that Shani Louk, who was murdered by Hamas on October 7, was found to be still alive. The entry's opening paragraph asserts that Israel began spreading propaganda "through its various media arms and through its intelligence agencies, headed by Unit 8200, which specializes in electronic warfare… Since the first hours of the battle, Tel Aviv tried to spread a lot of news without real evidence in an attempt to link the Palestinian resistance factions to terrorism and gain international sympathy," a distorted and ill-informed description of the IDF's intelligence-gathering unit which purposely ignores Hamas's war crimes and terrorism.

S., a source from an Israeli tech company, approached the issue of bias in Arabic Wikipedia from a programming and AI perspective, coming up with a script that resulted in a list of hundreds of cases of inaccuracies and bias.

Examples found by S.'s script include accusing Israel of carrying out the disengagement plan to strengthen the Jewish presence in the mixed cities of Ramla and Lod and arguing against Israel for failing to compensate Gazans who lost their jobs following the disengagement.

Another minor yet contributing example is from the entry titled "Palestinian Cuisine." "There's an entire section titled 'Israel's stealing of Palestinian cuisine,'" added S. "The entry reads: 'The traditional Palestinian cuisine, one of the most important things that Israel makes efforts to nationalize, steal its varieties, and show them to the world as Israeli dishes, does this with dishes that are many times the age of its state.' This is non-professional writing attributing malicious intent and overlooking nuances such as shared culinary history."

"Sometimes they'll delete a reference which contains content that is positive about Israel or negative about Hamas, and replace it with other references who say the opposite," added S., explaining that these changes are usually overlooked by editors, yet AI tools are able to detect them easily. "It's simply everywhere to be found," S. concluded.

These are but mere examples of a widespread phenomenon on the Arabic version of Wikipedia. However, it appears that the ability to edit these entries is heavily restricted by the inner measures of Wikipedia's Arabic language community.

Wiki Arabic's exclusive editors' club

Wikipedia presents itself as a free endeavor where anyone can contribute to the world's common knowledge. The website is owned by the Wikimedia Foundation, an NGO which, as a matter of principle, rarely interferes in the content and editing process of specific entries, even when facing stories of widespread bias and misinformation.

Upon facing such ostensible ahistorical assertions, misinformation, and outright antisemitic blood libels, one would have expected that correcting and editing these entries would be a matter of necessity and that Wikipedia would encourage these corrections. However, sources who spoke to The Jerusalem Post following their attempts to edit Arabic language content told a different story.

"Unfortunately, the international Wikimedia Foundation and the English Wikipedia Community won't budge about the inherent anti-Israel bias on the website, nor permanently block users who are recorded to systematically work to embed biased knowledge, even though this is a clear infringement of Wikipedia's neutrality principle," said Dr. Shlomit Aharoni Lir, Research Fellow at Bar Ilan University and University of Haifa and founding member of Forum Dvorah, who conducted several studies regarding bias on the free encyclopedia.

"The Foundation could implement AI tools to monitor neutrality and portray the message of zero tolerance to bias, one-sided edits. But unfortunately, they are unwilling to hear anything about it," added Aharoni Lir, who pointed out that a year ago an article about a group of editors who worked to systematically bias Holocaust-related entries was published in a scientific journal, and in this case too, the Foundation did not intervene.

"Wikipedia is, in principle, a project designed to empower and democratize knowledge and encourage public participation in writing and sharing information. But regrettably, it became a propaganda project.  Given the site's enormous popularity and the retrieval of Wikipedia entries by Google, this is tantamount to poisoning the minds of millions across the globe," Aharoni Lir concluded.

Shira Gutgold, an independent researcher on Arabic Wikipedia, added: "The fact that the banner is still up there means that Wikimedia is okay with it. That they allow the use of their brand assets in this way, including their logo and the virtual 'real estate' used by the banner outside the defined article content, means a tacit endorsement. This is especially striking, as organizations are usually very protective of their brand assets and don't normally allow their use in this manner."

Gutgold also pointed to other challenges. "There are many terminology-related issues, which are smaller but still very important. There is an ongoing and extensive effort to change previous references to the IDF as 'the (Israeli) occupation army,' and 'Civilians' are sometimes referred to as 'settlers.' There's an attempt to legitimize the massacre based on Hamas's 'Our Narrative' document and to hide or downplay any harm done to civilians."

Finally, Gutgold warned of the implications of such narratives going unchecked. "Wikipedia is used in universities as a starter for any research and is used popularly as an almost automatic fact-checking apparatus. The next big challenge will also involve AI and the language models that will train them. This is a front no less important than the physical battlefield."

Magde Qasim, an Israeli Arab activist and social media expert, added that when he attempted to edit some of the misleading information in different articles, he found that his account was suspended. "I would correct very small issues; for instance, some Arab cities inside Israel were written under Palestine. So, I changed it to Israel and soon found out that it was changed back again to Palestine. They ended up blocking my account for two years," he added.

A fourth well-inversed source who chose to remain anonymous confirmed that there is a substantial difference between editing policies on the Arabic page and the ones of the English one: "New usernames are not defined as editors, but are put in a sort of 'intermediate state.' Each of their edits goes into a sort of 'backlog' which only those registered as editors can approve. Otherwise, it will not show on the entry." The source added that there are about 1000 confirmed editors, which make up a closed group, and only they can make edits that are automatically approved."

Referring to coordinated initiatives to revise and rewrite information on Wikipedia, the source reminded that last April, there was a case in which the Wikimedia Foundation blocked several editors who were involved in promoting censorship on behalf of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance of the Iranian regime, adding that Wikimedia must also deal with this sort of endeavor in the same way.

'A major governance crisis'

Ashley Rindsberg, responsible for the major expose of the fierce battle going on behind the scenes at Wikipedia, spoke to the Post, stating that relations between Wikimedia and the progressive-leaning Tides Foundation have existed since at least 2015. 

"I wrote for the past weeks about the change in the internal culture of editing on Wikipedia. The conservative voices were silenced during discussions. The entire inner ecosystem changed after October 7. The level of propaganda began to rise among the pro-Palestinian side; the flood is unimaginable," added Rindsberg.

Rindsberg also described a surge of anti-Israel content, such as entries titled "Zionism as settler colonialism," especially since the October 7 Massacre. According to Rindsberg, this was also reflected in discussions behind the scenes of the entries, pointing at roughly 40 editors who devoted their time specifically to pro-Palestine content and who he deems to have been working in groups and attacking other editors in a de-facto orchestrated fashion. "The ferocity of these debates was astounding. They argued against the existence of rape during the Nova festival, claimed that Israelis were raping children, and even worked to delete a picture of Palestinian cleric Hajj Amin Al-Husseini when he toured a concentration camp. They are coordinating efforts despite the fact that this is not formally allowed on Wikipedia," he added.

To Rindsberg, the decision taken by Wikipedia's management to stay idle about these findings is striking. "The whole ethos of this website is staying neutral - otherwise, we don't really have a 'free encyclopedia,' but rather a propaganda machine in which anonymous editors attempt to influence people's minds, including possibilities of government interventions. They are all using the very structure and ethos of Wikipedia to hide what they are trying to do.

"Wikipedia is facing a major governance crisis," added Rindsberg, pointing out that while the management may know about what is being published about the ongoing anti-Israel crusade on their website, "they are not yet fully aware of the public perception of what Wikipedia is today. People nowadays know that Wikipedia has become biased and untrustworthy," he concluded.

S., the aforementioned tech worker, added: "These things should not be ignored. There are over half a billion native Arabic speakers, and the first thing they see when they enter Wikipedia is how Israel is committing genocide, bombing hospitals and schools, and acting with inexplicable violence. The tendency and the lack of neutrality in Wikipedia in Arabic (and also in English) contribute a lot to perpetuating hatred and conflict and obscuring the truth.

"Wherever you look, even in the most mundane topics, you will find enmity, prejudices, and a radically biased narrative against Israel. Even if you were not raised to hate Israel, you will get it in this way and through these places - this is what every Arab child will see on Google, this is what AI will tell them right away, and if we don't do anything about it - it will only get worse."

Comments

Michal Wander Schwartz, CEO of Wikimedia Israel, commented to the Jerusalem Post: "Each community in Wikipedia runs independently and makes decisions on policy and content in the project in its own language. Unfortunately, the Arab Wikipedia community has decided to exploit the Wikipedia brand resources for inappropriate political use. The Hebrew Wikipedia community and Wikimedia Israel expressed their protest about this in the international forums of the Wikimedia movement as well as before the executive committee of the Wikimedia Foundation, which unfortunately refrains from interfering with the Arab community's decision."

Global Wikimedia has yet to respond to the Post's comment requests.