‘Profound ignorance’: Wikipedia labels Zionism ‘colonialism’ in stunning display of bias

JERUSALEM – For Jews, the slings and arrows never seem to cease, and the attempts to erase all or parts of Jewish history, particularly the decoupling of Jews and Judaism from Israel continue apace.

Wikipedia, one of the world’s top-10 most visited sites, published an updated page on the topic of Zionism, the contents of which would not look out of place in an Ivy League school’s freshman Middle Eastern Studies curriculum.

Several social media users noticed alterations made to the Zionism page on the Wikipedia website over the last day or two, with many posting side-by-side screenshot comparisons between the page as it looked in 2023, and the updated September 2024 version.

Liv Lovisa, a Swedish X user posted such a comparison, with the comment, “History is being rewritten.” Her post has garnered more than 5,000 likes.

The Wikipedia page for Zionism;
2023 vs 2024.

History is being rewritten. pic.twitter.com/8pglmWJKBB

— Liv Lovisa (@eljest_) September 16, 2024

At the heart of the controversy is the use of much more aggressive and combative language in the 2024 version, which editorializes what the individual who runs the page thinks Zionism is, rather than the 2023 version, which actually delivers a perfectly passable description. It reads: “Zionism is a nationalist movement that emerged in the nineteenth century to espouse support for the establishment of a Jewish homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine, a region roughly corresponding to the Land of Israel in the Jewish tradition. Following the establishment of the State of Israel, Zionism became an ideology that supports the “development and protection of the State of Israel.” So far, so good.

However, the 2024 version of the page reads as follows: “Zionism is an ethno-cultural nationalist movement that emerged in Europe in the late nineteenth century and aimed for the establishment of a Jewish state through the colonization of a land outside of Europe. It eventually focused on the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, a region corresponding to the Land of Israel in Jewish history, and of central importance in Jewish history.”

This description is already beginning to get a little dicey, but gets significantly worse. It follows with: “Zionists wanted to create a Jewish state in Palestine with as much land, as many Jews, and as few Palestinian Arabs as possible.”

The last sentence is a flat-out lie and highlights a number of lacunae in the Wikipedia editor’s understanding of Israel’s history – especially during Ottoman rule – and falls prey to a number of misnomers. Whoever edited the page seems to be under the misperception that Jews are exclusively European or that Zionism was not intended for Mizrachi – or “Eastern” Jews, although this term is an imperfect description of Jews who have long and storied histories and origins in the Iberian peninsula, North Africa, Central Asia, as well as large swaths of the Middle East.

​​https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5N7MDav2vc

Furthermore, the Jews who did emigrate to Palestine under Ottoman rule, were in no position to colonize anything, as their Turkish masters had ruled over the region since the early 1500s. Also, Arabs living in the country at this time, did not conceive of themselves as “Palestinians.” As opposed to Judaism, which is both a religion and a race, and in contradistinction to the other Abrahamic faiths, having a specific tie to a national homeland – Israel – there is no similar construct available for the Arabs. Ottoman Palestine was a regional backwater too; it was so discarded and its position in the Empire so lowly, its governor lived in Damascus.

Wikipedia, is a public, user-edited platform, which in the old days of the internet – and really before the 2016 U.S. election – was viewed by some as helpful. However, over time, and on hot-button topics, upon which there is vigorous and often acrimonious debate, the ability of editors to seemingly steer outside of certain boundaries – as in this case – has become increasingly problematic.

The Times of Israel’s senior analyst Haviv Rettig Gur, whose near-weekly conversations with Dan Senor on the “Call me Back” podcast have catapulted him to a broader audience said simply, “The whole campaign, top to bottom, is a war on our story.”

The whole campaign, top to bottom, is a war on our story.

That this bigotry consumes them isn’t new. The only new element is the profound ignorance among Jews that allows this war on our story to go unchallenged.

That is our task: To know ourselves so no one can erase us. https://t.co/nmjLU8Y3Sz

— Haviv Rettig Gur (@havivrettiggur) September 16, 2024

Pro-israel Educator Hen Mazzig, whose family was expelled from North Africa and Iraq, eventually making their way to Israel, called the Wikipedia post “downright antisemitic.”

The new Wikipedia entry on Zionism isn’t just inaccurate, it’s downright antisemitic.

It asserts that the origin of Ashkenazi Jews is “highly debated and enigmatic,” echoing Khazar theory, the dangerous lie that Ashkenazi Jews are converts and not descendants of the Jews exiled…

— Hen Mazzig (@HenMazzig) September 16, 2024