Rabbi Yaakov Menken in the Jewish News Syndicate
Candace Owens launched into a rant on her YouTube show last week claiming that the Star of David is tied to child sacrifice and black magic. She “explained” that King Solomon, builder of the Holy Temple, had a ring that he used to command demons. All of this, she said, shocked her “to the core” but “if it’s on Wikipedia … that just must mean that it’s such an irreversible fact.”
This was not the first time Owens based one of her wilder conspiracy theories on the ubiquitous online resource. In her opinion, “It’s gotta be true if it’s on Wikipedia.” But endorsing Wikipedia fits neatly into Owens’s new position as a leading promoter of antisemitism because the web-based encyclopedia has what others have called its very own “Jewish Problem.” And unlike Owens, Wikipedia owes much of its spread to its generous connections to Big Tech.
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Wikipedia’s antisemitism is practically ubiquitous across the website. It features an extensive article accusing Israel of “war crimes,” “indiscriminate attacks” and “genocide” as Israel seeks to eliminate the Hamas terror organization.
Regarding Hamas itself, however, Wikipedia merely says that “authors have characterized” (emphasis added) the Hamas charter as genocidal, although Hamas leaders themselves repeatedly declare that genocide against the Jewish nation is the group’s very purpose and mission. Instead, Wikipedia claims that the Hamas position regarding Israel has “evolved” from seeking its destruction to seeking its annihilation.
Readers of Wikipedia “learn” on multiple redundant pages that the wholesale expulsion of Palestinian Arabs from Israel is an uncontested fact. Never mind that Robert F. Kennedy documented the pride that Zionists took in Arab immigration, the genocidal intent of the Arab League when it attacked Israel in 1948 and that local Arabs were advised to voluntarily leave their homes until the Jews were exterminated. Yet according to Wikipedia, the real aggressors were unquestionably the Jews.
According to Wikipedia, an “apartheid” state is a Middle Eastern country in which both Jews and Arabs have civil rights, “Palestine” is a country that actually exists and Arabs are natives of the region. Wikipedia also has a long piece celebrating the propagation of this sort of bigotry via “Israel Apartheid Week” with “criticism” of its antisemitic hate relegated to the end.
Wikipedia’s co-founder Larry Sanger abandoned the organization in 2002. As documented on Wikipedia itself, Sanger noted that the site is dominated not by experts with actual, relevant knowledge, but by those who edit most frequently and insistently, not to mention the “trolls.” This is why major universities dismiss Wikipedia as an unreliable source that is unacceptable for academic work.
In June, Wikipedia took its bias to a new level, unironically stating that it considers the ADL an “unreliable” source on the Israel-Hamas War. The statistically impossible casualty counts provided by the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry, on the other hand, are cited as if they were credible.
The connection between Wikipedia and Big Tech is easy to establish. Though Wikipedia likes to beg regular users for money, its Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) features a who’s who of Big Tech donors: Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Adobe, Salesforce and more. Besides direct grants from these firms, woke programmers, engineers and other staff at companies like Apple and Google, as well as LinkedIn, Intel and Netflix have used matching gift programs to multiply their contributions.
The truth is that WMF, together with the Wikimedia Endowment, holds over $350 million in assets. This means that with no further donations or investments, Wikipedia can continue operating comfortably for over a century. Yet its relationship with Big Tech has only deepened and diversified.
In 2021, Wikimedia launched Wikimedia Enterprise, providing paid services for companies and organizations that reuse Wikipedia content on a large scale. A routine search using Google, Alexa or Siri often brings you a highlighted result drawn from Wikipedia like the Google “Knowledge Panel” at the top of search results. This is, in part, why a Google search for “apartheid” features recurring instances of antisemitic fiction on its first page of results.
Besides Big Tech, there is one more Wikipedia donor to consider: the Soros-funded Tides Foundation. Tides has also given millions of dollars to groups that instigated and supported the antisemitic protests across America since Oct. 7. This is the company Wikimedia keeps.
Through direct links, integration with Wikimedia Enterprise and generous donations, Big Tech is enabling the spread of antisemitic hatred via the trolls of Wikipedia. Only the same Big Tech firms are positioned to compel Wikipedia to improve its contribution, editing and review processes to demonstrate the commitment to fairness and accuracy that should be the hallmark of any true source of knowledge.
Originally published in the Jewish News Syndicate
Photo Credit: Nohat on Wikimedia Commons