Wikipedia Editors Place Moratorium on Controversial Sentence in Zionism Article

Wikipedia editors decided to place a one-year moratorium barring anyone from editing or discussing the controversial sentence in the lead of the Zionism Wikipedia page: “Zionists wanted to create a Jewish state in Palestine with as much land, as many Jews, and as few Palestinian Arabs as possible.”

Middle East historian Asaf Romirowsky, who heads Scholars for Peace in the Middle East and the Association for Study in the Middle East and North Africa, has previously told me that this sentence in the Wikipedia page is “false” because “there are [an] abundance of diplomatic correspondents of looking to find ways for coexistence and the fact of the matter is that all those Arabs who stayed in the land and became the Arab Israelis … they became naturalized citizens because of that earlier desire for coexistence between the population of the land.” My previous reporting highlighted how the sentence resulted from anti-Israel editors primarily citing anti-Zionist historians and appearing to take a passage from one of renowned Israeli historian Benny Morris’ books out of context.

The moratorium was implemented on Feb. 21; a recent report from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) cited the moratorium as an example of Wikipedia’s anti-Israel bias. The moratorium came about after the editor “Bob drobbs” started a discussion on the Zionism talk page on Jan. 27 suggesting alternative phrasings to the sentence to make it more neutral. Bob drobbs was immediately met with opposition from anti-Israel editors who noted that a Request for Comment (RfC) — a formal discussion in which a closer (an uninvolved Wikipedian in good standing) renders a verdict on the discussion based on numbers and strength of the arguments as they pertain to site policy — had been closed on Jan. 4 finding that the sentence, as written, adhered to Wikipedia’s neutral point of view (NPOV) policy and should remain in the article. These editors argued that while Wikipedia policy acknowledges that consensus can change, it was too soon to launch a new discussion on the matter and is thus considered “disruptive.” Bob drobbs contended that the previous RfC left wiggle room for improvements to the sentence to be discussed, while anti-Israel editors claimed that Bob drobbs’ suggestions would have broken the consensus derived from the previous RfC.

https://jewishjournal.com/news/380108/wikipedia-editors-place-moratorium-on-controversial-sentence-in-zionism-article/

Wikipedia is hopelessly biased. It's a lost cause.