Wikipedia moderators voted nearly unanimously last week to label the Anti-Defamation League as “unreliable” amid the Israel-Hamas conflict and might do the same concerning antisemitism.
By drawing that tag, the Jewish advocacy group would not typically be cited in articles surrounding the war.
According to the editors, the ADL’s dual role as a lobbyist for Israel and a research organization compromises the group’s ability to remain impartial.
“The ADL is heavily biased regarding Israel/Palestine to the point of often acting as a pro-Israel lobbying organization,” one editor who goes by Loki wrote in an online post about the vote. “This can and does compromise its ability to accurately report facts regarding people and organizations that disagree with it on this issue, especially non-Zionist or anti-Zionist Jews and Jewish organizations.”
Other editors who voted to label the ADL as unreliable cited the comments of CEO Jonathan Greenblatt.
“Its CEO publicly comparing the pro-Palestine protestors wearing keffiyeh with Nazis wearing swastika armbands as well as misrepresenting all pro-Palestine protestors as ’wanting all Zionists dead’ demonstrates its skewed views and manipulative presentation on the IP topic and thus highly unreliable,” another editor wrote.
The editors are still discussing whether to label the ADL as an unreliable source on the subject of antisemitism.
The unreliable source label puts the ADL in the company of state-run Russia Today, the tabloid TMZ and the conspiracy site InfoWars.
The ADL rejected the decision, which it said would prevent valuable information about antisemitism from reaching the public.
“It is deeply disturbing that the many editors who flagged the severe flaws and inaccuracies in both the reasoning and sources being used in this campaign to delegitimize the ADL are being ignored. They have provided point by point refutations, grounded in factual citations, to every claim made, but apparently facts no longer matter,” the ADL said in a statement.
• Vaughn Cockayne can be reached at vcockayne@washingtontimes.com.
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