Anti-Zionist group hosting event to ‘populate Wikipedia entries honouring martyred Palestinian artists’

An anti-Zionist group is hosting an event in Toronto to flood Wikipedia with entries to honour what it refers to as “martyred” Palestinians.

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Stop Art Washing describes itself as an organization of “art workers across so-called-Canada demanding cultural institutions divest from settler colonialism and genocide.” It is hosting “a Wikipedia 101 session” with “hands-on editing” on Oct. 22 at an undisclosed location, according to its Instagram account.

The purpose of the event is “to populate Wikipedia entries honouring martyred Palestinian artists and exposing the Canadian, Zionist backers of genocide.”

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This goes against Wikipedia’s own policy that says the platform should not be used as “a soapbox, a battleground, or a vehicle for propaganda, advertising, and showcasing.” It also says that all content should be written from a neutral point of view.

The Times of Israel reported that a similar event was held in London, U.K., in 2024.

Wikipedia did not respond to National Post’s request for comment.

A page on the website dedicated to Wikipedia and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict says that since Oct. 7, 2023, the volume of edits on the topic “has surged significantly.” Coverage of the conflict on Wikipedia has faced “criticism from advocates on both sides for perceived bias,” it says.

In an interview with PBS, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales was asked specifically about an entry on the “Gaza genocide” that described it as an “ongoing, intentional and systematic destruction of the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip carried out by Israel.”

Wales called it “one of the worst Wikipedia entries” he’s seen in a long time and said he was shocked by it.

“It needs to change. I think it’s just terrible. It doesn’t live up to our standards of neutrality, and I think it’s very problematic,” he said.

Dozens of anti-Israel organizations criticized Wales for his response and urged him to “oppose censorship on Gaza genocide.”

An analysis of a Wikipedia page about South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice was published by National Post in 2024. It found there were 27 highly active editors who contributed “significantly” to the page. Some would make changes such as removing neutral language from a section that included a response from Israel, while others would change article titles to include emotionally charged terminology.

Researchers identified “patterns of anti-Israel bias among power-user editors, highlighting how personal viewpoints can seep into supposedly neutral content.”

The analysis revealed “alarming patterns of bias that can cascade through the digital information ecosystem, infecting everything from search engine results to academic citations to social media posts and even AI training data.”

Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia founded in 2001. Its entries are written by hundreds of thousands of volunteer editors. It is available in more than 300 languages.

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