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Wikipedia disciplines editors in Holocaust distortion dispute but sidesteps debate over Polish complicity
(JTA) — Wikipedia has banned three editors from working on articles related to Jewish history in Poland during World War II, in a bid to resolve editing disputes and safeguard its credibility.
But the online encyclopedia stopped short of taking more aggressive action in response to allegations of widespread Holocaust distortion on the platform.
The decision, handed down Saturday, concludes more than two months of deliberation by Wikipedia’s Arbitration Committee, which acts as Supreme Court over the community of volunteers who edit the website.
The Arbitration Committee had opened an investigation in response to an unprecedented academic study concluding that a group of editors had gamed Wikipedia’s rules to introduce content that absolves Poland of blame for antisemitism and Jewish suffering during the Holocaust, in line with the ultranationalist view prevailing in the country.
In keeping with Wikipedia’s accountability framework and to the dismay of the study’s authors, the committee didn’t take a position on the underlying dispute over Polish antisemitism and complicity with the Nazis. The committee instead concluded that then editors did not adhere to the community’s code of conduct.
The committee’s conclusion “entirely missed the mark,” said Shira Klein, a history professor at Chapman University whose study, written with University of Ottawa historian Jan Grabowski, triggered the investigation.
Klein said that by avoiding the issue of historical truth and focusing on civility, Wikipedia sent a clear message: “There’s no problem with falsifying the past; just be nice about it.”
The ruling comes amid a flare-up of attention to Poland’s insistence on a narrative of innocence during its occupation by Nazi Germany, thanks to comments made by Israeli pop star Noa Kirel following her third-place finish in the Eurovision song contest.
Kirel told Israeli media that she considered it a “victory” to have been awarded the maximum number of votes by Poland given that much of her family on her father’s side had been murdered in Auschwitz. Her comments proved explosive in Poland, where officials and media figures argued that Poland was not to blame for what happened to her family and that Polish people suffered much the same as Jewish victims of the Nazi regime.
Those ideas are baked into Polish law, which since 2018 has criminalized accusing Poland of complicity with the Nazi regime. Klein and Grabowski said they identified a set of Wikipedia editors who are propagating the same ideas on the site.
A majority of the 12 members serving on Wikipedia’s Arbitration Committee decided against a complete ban against an editor known as Volunteer Marek, who has been accused of skewing the historical record by pushing a Polish ultranationalist agenda, despite a finding of repeated conduct violations.
Instead, Volunteer Marek, and another editor facing similar allegations, are no longer allowed to edit articles on Jewish-Polish history during World War II. A third editor, who sought to correct the distortions, was also barred from the topic area over uncivil conduct. All three can appeal their bans in a year.
In another measure, the decision creates a higher standard for the reintroduction of fringe sources in articles on the topic after they had been removed by anyone, in the hope of addressing the back-and-forth editing battles that can take place.
For Klein, the problem is not the committee itself, but rather that Wikipedia doesn’t have what she considers an appropriate mechanism to address propaganda efforts. She said consulting professional historians should be part of the solution.
“There is a systemic problem here that goes way beyond the distortion of Holocaust history,” Klein said. “This is the seventh-most viewed site in the world, yet the safeguards Wikipedia has in place for battling disinformation are scarily ineffective. If it’s true for the history of the Holocaust, it is probably true for other cases we have yet to discover. With ChatGPT amplifying Wikipedia on an unprecedented scale, this new failure is all the more worrying.”
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The post Wikipedia disciplines editors in Holocaust distortion dispute but sidesteps debate over Polish complicity appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Tucker’s Ideas About Jews Come from Darkest Corners of the Internet, Says Huckabee After Combative Interview
US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee looks on during the day he visits the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest prayer site, in Jerusalem’s Old City, April 18, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
i24 News – In a combative interview with US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, right-wing firebrand Tucker Carlson made a host of contentious and often demonstrably false claims that quickly went viral online. Huckabee, who repeatedly challenged the former Fox News star during the interview, subsequently made a long post on X, identifying a pattern of bad-faith arguments, distortions and conspiracies in Carlson’s rhetorical style.
Huckabee pointed out his words were not accorded by Carlson the same degree of attention and curiosity the anchor evinced toward such unsavory characters as “the little Nazi sympathizer Nick Fuentes or the guy who thought Hitler was the good guy and Churchill the bad guy.”
“What I wasn’t anticipating was a lengthy series of questions where he seemed to be insinuating that the Jews of today aren’t really same people as the Jews of the Bible,” Huckabee wrote, adding that Tucker’s obsession with conspiracies regarding the provenance of Ashkenazi Jews obscured the fact that most Israeli Jews were refugees from the Arab and Muslim world.
The idea that Ashkenazi Jews are an Asiatic tribe who invented a false ancestry “gained traction in the 80’s and 90’s with David Duke and other Klansmen and neo-Nazis,” Huckabee wrote. “It has really caught fire in recent years on the Internet and social media, mostly from some of the most overt antisemites and Jew haters you can find.”
Carlson branded Israel “probably the most violent country on earth” and cited the false claim that Israel President Isaac Herzog had visited the infamous island of the late, disgraced sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
“The current president of Israel, whom I know you know, apparently was at ‘pedo island.’ That’s what it says,” Carlson said, citing a debunked claim made by The Times reporter Gabrielle Weiniger. “Still-living, high-level Israeli officials are directly implicated in Epstein’s life, if not his crimes, so I think you’d be following this.”
Another misleading claim made by Carlson was that there were more Christians in Qatar than in Israel.
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Pezeshkian Says Iran Will Not Bow to Pressure Amid US Nuclear Talks
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian attends the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit 2025, in Tianjin, China, September 1, 2025. Iran’s Presidential website/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via REUTERS
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said on Saturday that his country would not bow its head to pressure from world powers amid nuclear talks with the United States.
“World powers are lining up to force us to bow our heads… but we will not bow our heads despite all the problems that they are creating for us,” Pezeshkian said in a speech carried live by state TV.
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Italy’s RAI Apologizes after Latest Gaffe Targets Israeli Bobsleigh Team
Milano Cortina 2026 Olympics – Bobsleigh – 4-man Heat 1 – Cortina Sliding Centre, Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy – February 21, 2026. Adam Edelman of Israel, Menachem Chen of Israel, Uri Zisman of Israel, Omer Katz of Israel in action during Heat 1. Photo: REUTERS/Athit Perawongmetha
Italy’s state broadcaster RAI was forced to apologize to the Jewish community on Saturday after an off‑air remark advising its producers to “avoid” the Israeli crew was broadcast before coverage of the Four-Man bobsleigh event at the Winter Olympics.
The head of RAI’s sports division had already resigned earlier in the week after his error-ridden commentary at the Milano Cortina 2026 opening ceremony two weeks ago triggered a revolt among its journalists.
On Saturday, viewers heard “Let’s avoid crew number 21, which is the Israeli one” and then “no, because …” before the sound was cut off.
RAI CEO Giampaolo Rossi said the incident represented a “serious” breach of the principles of impartiality, respect and inclusion that should guide the public broadcaster.
He added that RAI had opened an internal inquiry to swiftly determine any responsibility and any potential disciplinary procedures.
In a separate statement RAI’s board of directors condemned the remark as “unacceptable.”
The board apologized to the Jewish community, the athletes involved and all viewers who felt offended.
RAI is the country’s largest media organization and operates national television, radio and digital news services.
The union representing RAI journalists, Usigrai, had said Paolo Petrecca’s opening ceremony commentary had dealt “a serious blow” to the company’s credibility.
His missteps included misidentifying venues and public figures, and making comments about national teams that were widely criticized.