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Wikipedia’s ‘Supreme Court’ tackles alleged conspiracy to distort articles on Holocaust
(JTA) — When a pair of professors earlier this month published a paper accusing a group of Wikipedia editors from Poland of revising articles to distort the history of the Holocaust, their research went viral.
Most academic articles are seen by dozens or hundreds of people at best. This one, published in The Journal of Holocaust Research, hit more than 27,000 pageviews within weeks.
The paper’s reach was fueled by its analysis, unprecedented in the academic literature on Wikipedia, and its finding that a dedicated group has for some 15 years manipulated a source of information used by millions in ways that lay blame for the Holocaust on Jews and absolve Poland of almost any responsibility for its record of antisemitism.
The paper caught the eye of not just scholars and journalists but of the people in charge of resolving disputes over editing on crowd-sourced Wikipedia, the seventh-most popular website on the internet and one that is seen as the last bastion of shared truth in an ever-fracturing online environment.
Typically, disputes among Wikipedia editors are resolved through community consensus mechanisms, but occasionally those mechanisms fail and allegations are brought to Wikipedia’s Arbitration Committee, a panel of elected editors known as Wikipedia’s Supreme Court.
“Wikipedia is not exactly democratic but anarchistic in a way that actively discourages any sort of an authority coming to solve a dispute,” said Joe Roe, a veteran Wikipedia editor who served on the committee in 2019 and 2020. “The Arbitration Committee is a very limited exception.”
In this case, something especially unusual happened. The Arbitration Committee, or ArbCom, decided to look into the allegations without receiving a formal request to do so. No one could recall the committee taking such a step in its nearly two decades of existence.
“A myopic decision here could result in untold numbers of people being fed a distorted view of Jewish/WWII history, which could have very real consequences given the recent amplification of violently antisemitic rhetoric by mainstream public figures,” wrote a user named SamX in a public post about the case. “ArbCom needs to get this right.”
The article that triggered the opening of the case was published under the title, “Wikipedia’s Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust.” It accused 11 current and former editors of intentional distortions to numerous articles relating to the Holocaust in Poland. The paper referred to the editors by their usernames but also provided their real names if they had publicly identified themselves on Wikipedia message boards.
“Due to this group’s zealous handiwork, Wikipedia’s articles on the Holocaust in Poland minimize Polish antisemitism, exaggerate the Poles’ role in saving Jews, insinuate that most Jews supported Communism and conspired with Communists to betray Poles, blame Jews for their own persecution, and inflate Jewish collaboration with the Nazis,” wrote co-authors Jan Grabowski, a historian at the University of Ottawa, and Shira Klein of the history department at Chapman University in Orange, California.
Normally, mistakes on Wikipedia, whether intentional or not, can be quickly fixed by experienced editors who deploy a set of rules regarding sourcing and style. But in this case, the alleged distortionists know Wikipedia’s mechanisms well enough to at least appear to follow the rules and are willing to spend time arguing with other editors who step in to intervene. It becomes harder to get to the truth because they work to discredit established historians and prop up fringe voices to create the semblance of a real-world debate over historical events, according to the article.
In one of the dozens of examples documented in the study, the alleged distortionists have tried to pass the self-published work of an antisemitic Polish writer named Ewa Kurek as a reliable source. Kurek has said that COVID-19 is a cover for an attempt by Jews to take over Europe and that Jews enjoyed life in Nazi ghettos. An editor named Volunteer Marek argued in a backstage conversation among editors that Kurek should be cited as any “mainstream scholar” would be. And another editor, working on an article about a 1941 massacre of Jews in Poland, added Kurek’s claim that minimized the number of Jewish victims and exonerated Polish perpetrators.
Jewish school children pose for a portrait in the 1930s in Wizna, near Jedwabne, Poland. New research revealed that members of the Polish community killed their Jewish neighbors on July 10, 1941 during World War ll despite previous claims that Nazi Germans were entirely responsible. Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski apologized for the massacre of hundreds of Jews by their neighbors during ceremonies marking the 60th anniversary of the murders. (Laski Diffusion/Getty Images)
One thing the research didn’t discuss is what motivates these editors to invest so much time and effort into distorting Wikipedia. Klein said the omission was deliberate.
“We’ve been very careful not to make any assumptions on what drives them or what their politics are,” Klein said. “Instead, we’ve tried to focus just on what they’ve done, which is in the written record. And as we say in the article, we don’t see any evidence of them being tied to a government or being in the service of anyone else.”
Klein’s disclaimer obliquely points to a larger challenge around the historical record of the Holocaust in Poland. A central tenet of the country’s ruling Law and Justice party is defending the image of ethnic Poles and imposing nationalist narratives on the past, especially the period of World War II. While history shows that many Poles participated in the persecution of Jews, Poland’s nationalist right insists on portraying Poles only as victims or heroes.
In 2018, the Polish government passed what’s known as the Polish Holocaust Law, which makes it illegal to slander the Polish nation or blame the country for Nazi crimes. In practice, the law has served to censor scholars and chill debate.
Grabowski, Klein’s co-author on the paper, has for years sparred with the nationalist right over Poland’s historical memory. He sued a Polish group that accused him of publishing lies about Polish history in 2018, and in 2021 was ordered by a Polish court to apologize for his research before an appeals court ultimately overturned the order.
Domestically, Poland’s ultranationalists have largely won the war over the public discourse, which has freed them to focus on the global scene, where English-language Wikipedia is regarded as a major battlefront.
In this atmosphere, even something as basic as the background of Yiddish novelist and Nobel prize laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer can become fodder for debate. For years, Singer was at the center of a fight between two editors over whether Singer was best described in the first line of his Wikipedia article as a Jewish or Polish author. The eventual compromise — “Polish-born Jewish American” — lasted for almost two years until Feb. 23 when someone again dropped the “Jewish.”
The Wikipedia editors now being accused of distorting articles to further nationalist narratives have rejected the allegations against them.
“I have not engaged in any ‘Holocaust distortion,’ on Wikipedia or anywhere else. I am not a ‘right-wing Polish nationalist,’” said Volunteer Marek in a public comment on a Wikipedia message board that was endorsed by at least one other alleged distortionist. “I am not part of some nefarious ‘Polish conspiracy’ on Wikipedia which seeks to manipulate content. All of these accusations are ridiculous and absurd. They are particularly disgusting and vile since they go against everything I believe in.”
In the debate about how to handle the case, dozens of arbitrators and ordinary Wikipedia editors — all volunteers — spoke of the situation on a Wikipedia message board as something close to an existential crisis for Wikipedia. Not only was the website accused of being used to spread antisemitic propaganda, but it was also alleged to be vulnerable to large-scale manipulation by a small group of bad-faith actors.
There is little confidence in the community that a solution is within reach. By its own rules, the committee isn’t supposed to decide on disputed information. It’s more of a disciplinary body that evaluates the behavior of Wikipedia editors and can ultimately decide whether to restrict their editing privileges or ban them outright.
But figuring out if the accused editors have indeed evaded safeguards and undermined Wikipedia’s integrity would seem to require that the arbitrators become experts on the history of the Holocaust in Poland.
The decision to take up the case serves to acknowledge that the committee failed to solve the problem when it last considered complaints about editing related to the Holocaust in Poland about two years ago. That was during Roe’s tenure and he says the committee was distracted by another dispute at the time.
“It can’t be escalated further than it already has in our mechanisms,” Roe said. “The best we can do is what’s currently happening now — just put it through those mechanisms again, and hope that something better will come out on the other side.”
In explaining why the committee must nevertheless take on the case, an arbitrator who goes by Wugapodes commented that the only other choice is to kick the can down the road.
“This will not be an easy issue to resolve, but the committee was not convened to solve easy issues,” Wugapodes wrote, pointing out that the timing is right given the attention and involvement of outside experts and editors. “We can leverage these resources now or wait for this decade-long problem to get still worse.”
By a vote of nine to one on Feb. 13, the committee decided to open the case. The proceedings, which start with an evidence-gathering phase, are expected to last up to six weeks, after which they can decide to ban and restrict offending editors.
Beyond that, an unorthodox last resort option is also available. Wikipedia’s so-called Supreme Court could ask for help from an even higher authority: the Wikimedia Foundation, a nonprofit that owns the encyclopedia. The foundation intervened in 2021 in what some see as a similar scenario of a far-right takeover on the Croatian-language Wikipedia, hiring an outside expert to disentangle the web of obfuscation and banning a set of editors.
Roe said that his tenure on the committee in 2019 and 2020, which featured related complaints about the editing of articles on the Holocaust in Poland, helped lead him to believe that Wikipedia should embrace change, at least when it comes to controversial political topics.
“I would like to see these difficult and politically charged content problems be referred to a new body made up of external experts, and that we don’t insist on doing everything internally among the community volunteers,” Roe said.
But he acknowledged that such a scenario is unlikely to result from the Poland dispute.
“It’s not a popular view and it kind of goes against the general idea of Wikipedia,” he said.
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The post Wikipedia’s ‘Supreme Court’ tackles alleged conspiracy to distort articles on Holocaust appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Boston-area Jewish day school to close after 25 years, saying its model is ‘no longer sustainable’
(JTA) — For two decades, MetroWest Jewish Day School eked out an existence in the suburbs of Boston, providing what parents say was a warm and nurturing Jewish education to just dozens of children.
Now, the school says it simply cannot go on. MetroWest will shutter at the end of the academic year, officials announced last week.
“Despite extensive and sustained efforts by our Board, school leadership, faculty, staff, and committed community members to identify a viable path forward, we have concluded that our model of highly individualized Jewish day school education is no longer sustainable in the Metrowest area of Boston,” wrote board chair Steven Finn and head of school Brian Cohen wrote. “This decision was made with great care and reflection.”
Located in Framingham, Massachusetts, MetroWest Jewish Day opened in 2003 and enrolls students in pre-K through eighth grade. In its closure announcement, the school said it has served more than 300 students from over 30 towns in the greater Boston area over 25 years. According to social media posts, graduating eighth grade classes are typically between five and 10 students.
Currently, there are only about 20 students enrolled across all grades, school officials said. The school’s website shows 15 faculty and staff members.
“It’s a well-respected school,” Cohen told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “But in the end, if there’s not a demand for the product, the quality of the product doesn’t necessarily matter, because you don’t have customers wishing to participate.”
The closure follows a spate of recent closures of small Conservative or pluralistic Jewish day schools across the country, including in New Jersey, New York City and Arizona. Many of the schools had seen enrollment dwindle sharply. (Orthodox schools are faring better.)
Prizmah, the nonprofit network supporting Jewish schools, said it believed interest in day school enrollment had risen in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, as families gained new appreciation for Jewish community. But Cohen said there had been no “surge” at MetroWest, which already suffered during the Covid era.
“A lot of schools have substantially lower enrollment now than they did at the same time 10 or 20 years ago,” Cohen added. “We just are the one that is in the most critical condition right now.”
Now, MetroWest’s families must find other schools for next year. The school says founders Steven and Renée Finn “have generously committed to providing tuition scholarship support for current students who continue their Jewish day school education through eighth grade.”
Where the students might land is an open question. The Boston area is home to 13 other day schools, according to Combined Jewish Philanthropies, the city’s Jewish federation. (A “diasporic” day school that does not support Israel as a Jewish state is also in development; its founder has declined to speak with JTA but has said she believes there is adequate demand for such a school.)
MetroWest is about 15 miles from its most similar alternative, another pluralistic primary school called Jewish Community Day School of Boston. Commuting in the city’s notorious traffic could take up to an hour.
“The end of the MetroWest Jewish Day School leaves a huge hole for the local community,” said Paul Bernstein, CEO of Prizmah. “Steven and Renee Finn, working with Brian Cohen and so many others, created a wonderful school and built a proud 25-year legacy for the students and families whose lives it enriched.”
For now, the school is being mourned by the families that used it. Aviva Fellman, a rabbi at Congregation Beth Israel in Worcester, Massachusetts, is a parent of four. Her children attended MetroWest for eight years, commuting about 60 miles roundtrip.
Last year, after her oldest daughter graduated the family opted to put all of the children in schools closer to their home.
“They are still close to the friends that they made there, and we are grateful to the school for the education and social-emotional support that they received as they are all thriving and able to self-advocate and stay on top of their schooling through these changes,” Fellman said. “We also continue to be impressed with how each of our children are critical thinkers, enthusiastic learners, kind to others, and feel strongly and proudly Jewish and we thank the school for supporting and being part of all of that.”
The post Boston-area Jewish day school to close after 25 years, saying its model is ‘no longer sustainable’ appeared first on The Forward.
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France issues arrest warrants against 2 right-wing French-Israeli activists for ‘complicity in genocide’
(JTA) — France has issued arrest warrants for two French-Israeli activists for “complicity in genocide,” a charge that stemmed from the pair allegedly blocking humanitarian aid from entering the Gaza Strip.
The arrest warrants were issued in July against Nili Kupfer-Naouri, the president of the organization Israel Is Forever, and Rachel Touitou, an activist with the organization Tsav 9, a right-wing Israeli group that was sanctioned by the United States in June 2024 for destroying humanitarian aid for Gaza.
The two have been charged with “complicity in genocide” and “public and direct incitement to genocide,” the French newspaper Le Monde reported on Monday. They are accused of trying to block humanitarian aid trucks from entering Gaza between January and November 2024 and in May 2025.
An array of activists, including military reservists and family members of some hostages, sought to block the aid trucks from entering Gaza on the theory that helping Gazans would alleviate pressure on Hamas.
In an interview with i24News, Kupfer-Naouri said, “I blocked trucks that were supplying Hamas. If I had to do it again, I would do it again.” (Israel accused Hamas of stealing aid shipments to Gaza during the conflict.)
The warrants are notable because they represent a success by advocacy organizations seeking to hold Israelis responsible for what they say are war crimes. The warrants stemmed from a complaint made last year by the Palestinian Center for Human Rights and the groups Al-Mezan and Al-Haq, which were all sanctioned by the United States in September for having “directly engaged in efforts by the International Criminal Court to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute Israeli nationals, without Israel’s consent.”
In a joint statement with the French Jewish Union for Peace, which joined the complaint, the groups called the arrest warrant against Kupfer-Naouri “a historic step forward in the fight against impunity.”
The warrants call for Kupfer-Naouri and Touitou, who were both born in France and live in Israel, to appear before an investigating judge, but not for their detention, according to the French news agency AFP.
Touitou condemned the arrest warrant in a post on X Monday.
“If peacefully demonstrating with an Israeli flag against a terrorist organization seizing humanitarian aid, diverting it, and reselling it at exorbitant prices to Gazans is a crime—then there’s no need to look down on the Mullahs, France is just like Iran!,” she wrote. “I will always fight to defend the truth, my people, and my country 🇮🇱.”
In an interview posted on X last month, Kupfer-Naouri called the investigation an “antisemitic delusion,” adding, “I will no longer be able to set foot in France because I have no intention of going to French jails, neither in police custody, nor anything else.”
Kupfer-Naouri said the investigation could set a “very dangerous precedent” for French-Israeli soldiers in the Israeli military who return home to France.
Some Israeli soldiers traveling abroad have faced war crime inquiries for their actions in Gaza. Over the summer, some Canadian IDF soldiers also reported that they feared returning home after the Royal Canadian Mounted Police announced it had opened an investigation into crimes committed by Canadians during the war in Gaza.
The post France issues arrest warrants against 2 right-wing French-Israeli activists for ‘complicity in genocide’ appeared first on The Forward.
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Islamic State Terrorist Attack on Niger Airport Potentially More Deadly Than Government Revealed
Members of the Nigerien army walk near the motorcycles seized from the attackers, following an attack on Niamey International Airport, in Niamey, Niger, Jan. 29, 2026, in this screengrab from a video. Photo: ORTN/Reuters TV/Handout via REUTERSISIS
Islamic State’s attack on the airport in Niger‘s capital Niamey last week may have been more severe than the Nigerien government claimed, according to recent reports and a video released by a media outlet affiliated with the terrorist group.
More than 30 members of the Islamic State branch in the Sahel region targeted the Diori Hamani International Airport and Air Base 101 shortly after midnight on Thursday using guns, drones, and explosives. The jihadist group on Friday took credit for the assault in a short statement released online through its propaganda outlet, Amaq News Agency.
US forces had previously used the air base in Niamey — located six miles from the presidential palace — for maintaining drones until withdrawing in 2024 following the previous year’s coup d’état orchestrated by former Presidential Guard commander General Abdourahamane Tchiani, who now serves as the landlocked country’s 11th president.
Niger’s military and Russia’s Africa Corps mercenary group, which was also stationed at the base, said they combated the attack. Niger has so far reported four of its troops suffered injuries and there was little damage. The government said it killed 20 attackers and captured 11, at least one of whom was a French national, leading Nigerien authorities to blame France and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) for the attack.
“We remind the sponsors of those mercenaries, who are Emmanuel Macron [president of France], Patrice Talon [president of Benin], and Alassane Ouattara [president of the Ivory Coast], we have sufficiently heard them bark, and they should now in turn be prepared to hear us roar,” Tchiani said in a statement on national television.
While the government’s reason for ignoring Islamic State was not immediately clear, Niger has previously blamed its neighbors and former colonial ruler France for internal instability.
However, following its initial claim of responsibility, Islamic State published a 90-secoind video of the attack through Amaq News Agency, depicting far more damage than what Nigerien authorities claimed.
The video showed that some attackers came in on motorcycles and attacked aircraft hangars in Air Base 101, burning and shooting the planes. The video also presented a burning helicopter, and an additional statement from the terrorist group claimed the torching of a drone.
Local reports and accounts circulated on social media aligned with Islamic State’s account of greater damage, describing hits on civilian aircraft and a destroyed ammunition depot.
The base is a key military hub in the region, reportedly hosting a contested stockpile of uranium and the headquarters for the Niger-Burkina Faso-Mali Joint Force.
Caleb Weiss, an analyst who focuses on the spread of the Islamic State in Central Africa, reported in the Foundation for Defense of Democracy’s Long War Journal that unconfirmed social media reports reveal “a much higher death toll for both local Nigerien security forces and men from Russia’s Africa Corps who were also stationed at the airbase” — specifically, at least 24 Nigerien soldiers and three Russian mercenaries.
At the same time as the Niger attack, Islamic State’s West Africa Province perpetrated a similar strike in Nigeria’s Sabon Gari army base in Borno, leaving at least nine dead and more wounded.
The assaults came amid a surge of Islamic State terrorist activity across Africa, including the Sahel region, which stretches from the Horn of Africa to the Atlantic Ocean, just under the Sahara Desert. The Islamic State regional affiliate there has killed more than 120 people in the Tillabéri territory in September and also kidnapped an American in October.
“From Somalia to Nigeria, the problem set is connected. So, we’re trying to take it apart and then provide partners with the information they need,” the deputy commander of US Africa Command (AFRICOM), Lt. General John Brennan, said in January.
Terrorism in western Africa has exploded in recent years following three coups which have led their military leaders to create a confederacy aligned with Russia. Niger has joined with Burkina Faso and Mali to create the Association of Sahel States (AES), as an alternative to the ECOWAS. Reports have emerged of alleged atrocities committed by Russian mercenaries in Mali.
A November report from the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point revealed that Africa had become the global hot spot for terrorist killings. Analysts explained that “where once the global terror threat was concentrated in the Middle East and North Africa, today it is centered in the Sahel, specifically in the tri-border region between Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger.”
The data showed that 86 percent of deaths caused by terrorism happened in 10 countries with 7 in Africa and 5 in the Sahel.