By The Israel Group
A few years ago, after realizing the magnitude of Wikipedia’s informational reach, an editor decided it was important to give voice to Jewish Israelis who have been murdered by Palestinian terrorists. The editor then created the article, “Palestinian terrorism against Jews and Israel.”
Here’s one entry in the article, about Shlomit Krigman:
No more than 15 minutes after the article was created, a warning was posted that the article “may meet Wikipedia’s criteria for speedy deletion.”
For context, most article deletions are discussed, debated, and their fate decided in discussion pages—also known as talk pages—where consensus must be reached. These discussions can take days, weeks, or even months to resolve, and if there is no clear consensus, the article in question is not deleted.
Only in specific circumstances do articles fall into the “speedy deletion” category. Generally, those articles involve copyright infringement; they disparage, threaten, intimidate, or harass their subjects; they are self-promotional; or they have other issues that require Wikipedia administrators to immediately delete them.
There is also a rarely used cause for speedy deletion when an article is a duplicate of another article’s content (or doesn’t improve the other article). The speedy deletion, in this case, is rarely used because more often than not, the article can be fixed generally a Request for Deletion (RfD), not as a Request for Speedy Deletion is called where where it is discussed.
In this particular case, a speedy deletion was requested because the information does not improve the existing article, “List of violent incidents in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, 2016.”
Interestingly, upon seeing the title, the editor was kind of happy that Wikipedia had an article with all of this important information. However, the first thing the editor saw gave sincepause: the map.
This map (as discussed in that article) reads that Gaza has been “under Israeli occupation since 1967.” Israel completely withdrew from Gaza in 2007.
As is often the case, information from Wikipedia is spammed as fact throughout the Internet. This map is used on hundreds of sites, including in many Wikipedia articles.
Lists, bury in lists
Pro-Palestinian nationalist editors love lists. They use them to bury anti-Israel content while creating a Palestinian history as they want it to be recorded for the future. These efforts are not always easy to find and are even more difficult to monitor and correct. Just reviewing the first three days in 2016, readers see this. The red arrows mark Palestinian violence incidents against Israelis.
The blue arrows below represent Israeli violence incidents against Palestinians.
Understand the nuanced, nefarious, and planned Wikipedia editors’ efforts to portray Israel as the oppressor of the Palestinians, and their sustained efforts to remove anything from history that shows Palestinian terrorism.
This other article includes information that does not even contain violence but shows the anti-Israel editors' point of view that Israelis are oppressors of Palestinians.
Here’s one example, [as of November 17, 2017]:
6 January [2016]
Israel Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon decided that Beit al-Baraka, a (9.3 acre) former Protestant missionary compound north of al-Arrub refugee camp, purchased by Irving Moskowitz through a shell Swedish company in 2012 was to be annexed to the Gush Etzion bloc of settlements in the West Bank.[24][25]
Whether fact or fiction, is this really about violence? Should this be listed in an article that lists “violent incidents in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?”
The editor submitted reasons why the Wikipedia article should not be deleted. However, fifteen minutes later it was deleted!
Think about this. The editor was creating an article about Palestinian violence againsst Jews and was quickly deleted because another "similar" article existed that now shows more Israeli violence against Palestinians!
Interestingly, though, Wikipedia has this article:
But there is no article "List of Palestinian attacks on Israel." And Wikipedia has this article:
Wikipedia’s structure and policies have directly led to more than a decade of Pro-Palestinian nationalist editors hijacking Wikipedia for their own political and religious cause. Wikipedia will not stop this. It will only stop when a larger consensus of Wikipedia editors is established who want the information about Israel on Wikipedia to be historically factual, not propaganda directly lifted from the BDS manual.
About the editor behind the anti-Israel article
The creator of the article “List of violent incidents in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, 2016” is an editor by the name of “Nishidani.” Wiki-Israel ranks Nishidani as the #2 anti-Israel Wikipedia editor. Nishidani is responsible for tens of thousands of anti-Israel edits in Wikipedia.
Just to place Nishidani’s “neutral editing” in context, these quotes are on his/her Wikipedia editor’s page:
the Palestinians are the only people on earth required to guarantee the security of the occupier, while Israel is the only country that demands protection from its victims.Hanan Ashrawi paraphrased by Gideon Levy, 'Even Gandhi would understand the Palestinians’ violence,'Haaretz 8 October 2015.
The army’s professionality has been stained by the shooting soldier affair too. The chief of staff reported, in an explicit and documented manner, that two-thirds of the army are employed in keeping the occupied territories (it’s unbelievable, but only one-third deal with the Arab states, Iran, submarines, F-15, Hezbollah, Hamas and all the other calamities).Sima Kadmon, 'Hebron shooting: A micromodel of Israel’s maladies,' Ynet 5 December 2016.
'Israel has a poor record of holding its own forces to account for serious laws-of-war violations; Hamas has not even claimed to investigate violations by Palestinian fighters. The involvement of the ICC could help to deter both sides from committing war crimes, while potentially offering victims a modicum of justice. With its UN observer-state status, Palestine is eligible to join the ICC, and it marked the New Year by finally doing so. The ICC will have jurisdiction over war crimes committed in or from Palestinian territory; that is, its mandate will apply to both sides in the conflict. However, the US and leading EU countries tried to prevent this development by placing misguided pressure on Palestine not to join the Hague-based court. But they take the opposite position in virtually every other situation of large-scale war crimes, where they recognize that curbing these crimes is often a prerequisite to building the trust needed for productive peace talks. No one has credibly explained why the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should be an exception to this rule.'World Report Events of 2014 Human Rights Watch January 2015 p.7.
John V. Whitbeck, The only legally, politically and diplomatically correct ways to refer to the 22% portion of historical Palestine occupied in 1967 are now “the State of Palestine”, “Palestine” and “occupied Palestine”. “Palestinian Authority”, “occupied territories” and “occupied Palestinian territories” are no longer acceptable.’ at Counterpunch, Weekend Edition January 18-20, 2013
(The EU's 27 foreign ministers) have also received information from human rights organizations saying Israel is planning to evacuate some 2,500 Bedouins of the Jahalin tribe from their residence in the E1 area near Ma'aleh Adumim to the garbage removal site near the village of Abu Dis.Barak Ravid, 'EU voices protest over Israeli policies in East Jerusalem, West Bank,' at Haaretz, 23 December, 2011.
'Anti-Semitism exists today on the furthest margins of Western society, in obscure sinecures, on the Internet, but perhaps most prevalently in our feverish imaginations. And in our generation that is where it constitutes the biggest threat. ..It would make much more sense if they could outlaw calling people anti-Semites. Not because there aren’t any anti-Semites out there, but because of the damage we do ourselves with this incessant searching and name-calling.' Anshel Pfeffer, 'The new anti-Semitism is whatever Israelis want it to be,' at Haaretz 7 February 2014.[1]