Israeli-Palestinian conflict rages on Wikipedia

[azurnoir]

The international campaign to erode Israel’s legitimacy is slowly expanding its reach into the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, according to Israeli sources familiar with the Web site’s operations.

Yet, according to Israeli editors of the encyclopedia who asked to remain anonymous so as not to damage their editing rights on the Web site, these articles are slowly being taken over by pro-Palestinian campaigners in an effort to tilt the encyclopedia’s narrative of the conflict and its history to reflect their position.

However, in recent months, Israeli editors have sensed a growing presence of pro-Palestinian activists who have begun to develop ways to sidestep these controls. The result has been the introduction of narratives that question Israel’s legitimacy and advocate international legal and political action against the Jewish state.

For example, an article titled “Israel and the apartheid analogy,” weighing in at well over 10,000 words, purports merely to explain the analogy, not to support it. Yet while a long litany of arguments for “Israeli apartheid” are offered in detail, including quotes from well-known figures and even Israeli sources, only a handful see Israeli or pro-Israel responses.

One of the most important recent debates that showcased this ability concerned the technical definition of Mandatory Palestine as a state. Pro-Palestinian advocates have brought pro-Palestinian Western academics, along with selected quotations from British, Ottoman and UN sources, to argue that Palestine has always had the legal status of statehood, whether under Ottoman, British or Israeli occupation.

The purpose of the campaign is simple. If Palestine has always been a state, it has the legal right to turn to international tribunals to sue Israel for war crimes, a move that is difficult for non-state actors under the rules governing the International Criminal Court and other bodies

http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=175660

in counterpoint


Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America

The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) is a Boston-based, 501(c)(3) nonprofit, pro-Israel<2> media watchdog group.<3> The group says it was founded in 1982 "to respond to the Washington Post's coverage of Israel’s Lebanon incursion, and to the paper’s general anti-Israel bias".<4>

In May 2008, five Wikipedia editors involved in a secret CAMERA campaign to edit Wikipedia were prohibited by Wikipedia administrators, who wrote that the project's open nature "is fundamentally incompatible with the creation of a private group to surreptitiously coordinate editing by ideologically like-minded individuals".<19>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_for_Accuracy_in_Middle_East_Reporting_in_America

[azurnoir]

1. EI exclusive: a pro-Israel group's plan to rewrite history on Wikipedia

A pro-Israel pressure group is orchestrating a secret, long-term campaign to infiltrate the popular online encyclopedia Wikipedia to rewrite Palestinian history, pass off crude propaganda as fact, and take over Wikipedia administrative structures to ensure these changes go either undetected or unchallenged.

A series of emails by members and associates of the pro-Israel group CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America), provided to The Electronic Intifada (EI), indicate the group is engaged in what one activist termed a "war" on Wikipedia.

A 13 March action alert signed by Gilead Ini, a "Senior Research Analyst" at CAMERA, calls for "volunteers who can work as 'editors' to ensure" that Israel-related articles on Wikipedia are "free of bias and error, and include necessary facts and context." However, subsequent communications indicate that the group not only wanted to keep the effort secret from the media, the public, and Wikipedia administrators, but that the material they intended to introduce included discredited claims that could smear Palestinians and Muslims and conceal Israel's true history.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=124&topic_id=209172

posted as comment so as to conform to forum rules

[bemildred]

2. This should be very amusing to watch.

:hi:

[azurnoir]

4. It has been

particularly where the 2006 Lebanon conflict is concerned where over a period of months every table of causalities the word civilian was changed to citizen on the Lebanese side

[Tripmann]

3. But....but...but..

I though CAMERA was a reputable information source used by members of this forum.

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[shira]

7. Let us know when you find CAMERA's facts to be false

Waiting...

[Tripmann]

8. You want me to factcheck an organisation

whos whole reason for being is to twist and distort stories that make israel out to be anything less to 100% perfect and to provide counterpoints for same.

Get real shira. We've seen you use the camera counterpoints around here and get torn asunder at every turn.

Heres one example:

http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=22&x_article=926

"In addition, we studied how to counter common myths about Israel. For example, is it true that Israel is not complying with U.N. resolution 242, requiring withdrawal from the territories occupied in 1967? Not at all. The resolution does not actually specify particular territories or the extent of the withdrawal. (See www.camera.org to learn about other media myths.)"

Sound familiar. It should. It was your lame argument in another thread. 'Proving' what a UN resolution meant by whats NOT in it.

CAMERA is not about facts, its about providing half baked arguments and counters, none of which hold water.

[shira]

9. Hysterical!

You're truly impervious to reasoning and no amount of fact will ever be enough for you as demonstrated here from #186 to #191...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=124x311362#312684

Humor me.

You believe CAMERA, the testimony of Goldberg and Rostow, as well as the historical record on 242 as told by Caradon, the USSR's issues with the wording, the Arab states rejection of 242 in 1967...these are all just "Jewish" arguments. Why bother, right?

[Eg-ptiangirl]

5. Truth hurts

Truth is twisted and history is disfigured to serve a certain agenda in US, there is no doubt about that and there are thousands of examples.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

6. There are many truths...but in Wikipedia everyone gets to twist things

I'm a very long time editor there, but avoid that section like the plague