An aerial view shows Palestinians walking through the ruins of destroyed buildings in Jabalia refugee camp, northern Gaza Strip, on February 5, 2025.
(Photo by Khalil Ramzi Alkahlut/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“Wales and Sanger must be stopped from trying to censor the Wikipedia ‘Gaza genocide’ entry that clearly documents Israel’s horrifying crime against humanity.”
Dec 15, 2025 (CommonDreams.org)
More than 40 advocacy groups on Monday called on Wikipedia editors and the Wikimedia board of trustees to reject efforts by the web-based encyclopedia’s co-founders to censor the site’s entry on the Gaza genocide.
After months of internal debate, editors of the Wikipedia article titled “Allegations of genocide in the 2023 Israeli attack on Gaza” renamed the entry “Gaza genocide” in July 2024, reflecting experts’ growing acknowledgement that Israel’s annihilation and siege of the Palestinian exclave met the legal definition of the ultimate crime. The entry also notes that the Gaza genocide is not settled legal fact—an International Court of Justice case on the matter is ongoing—and that numerous experts refute the claim that Israel’s war is genocidal.
RECOMMENDED…
Billionaire Palantir Co-Founder Pushes Return of Public Hangings as Part of ‘Masculine Leadership’ Initiative
See the 19 Photos House Oversight Democrats Just Released From Epstein’s Estate
The move, and the subsequent addition of Gaza to Wikipedia’s article listing cases of genocide, sparked heated “edit wars” on the community-edited site—which has long been a target of pro-Israeli public relations efforts. In the United States, a pair of House Republicans launched an investigation to reveal the identities of the anonymous Wikipedia editors who posted negative facts about Israel.
“Israeli officials and pro-Israel organizations are attempting to hide the horrifying reality… by putting pressure on institutions like Wikipedia to engage in genocide denial.”
Wikipedia co-founders Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger have intervened in the dispute, with Wales—a self-described “strong supporter of Israel”—publicly stating that the Gaza genocide entry lacked neutrality, failed to meet Wikipedia’s “high standards,” and required “immediate attention” after an editor blocked changes to the article.
“Wales and Sanger are using their roles as Wikipedia founders to bypass the normal editing and review process and introduce their
own ideological biases into an entry that has already undergone exhaustive vetting and review by Wikipedia editors, including thousands of edits and comments,” the 42 advocacy groups said in a letter to Wikimedia’s board and site editors.
“Their efforts deny the documented reality of Israel’s genocide in Gaza and contradict the broad consensus among genocide scholars, international human rights organizations, UN experts, and both Palestinian and Israeli human rights organizations,” the groups continue. “In doing so, Wales and Sanger are engaging in attempted censorship and genocide denial.”
The letters’ signers include the American Friends Service Committee, Artists Against Apartheid, Brave New Films, CodePink, Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), Doctors Against Genocide, MPower Change Action Fund, Peace Action, and United Methodists for Kairos Response.
Since the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack, Israel’s retaliatory obliteration and siege on Gaza—for which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant are wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes—have left more than 250,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing. Around 2 million other Palestinians have been forcibly displaced, sickened, or starved in what hunger experts say is an entirely human-caused famine.
“The simple reality is that Israeli officials and pro-Israel organizations are attempting to hide the horrifying reality of Israel’s genocide in Gaza by pretending that there is a substantive debate and by putting pressure on institutions like Wikipedia to engage in genocide denial,” the groups’ letter asserts.
“Wales’ ‘both sides’ framework for denying the Gaza genocide,” the groups warned, “could also be used to legitimize Holocaust denial, denial of the Armenian genocide, or to platform ‘flat-earthers’ who deny the Earth’s spherical shape.”
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
Brett Wilkins is a staff writer for Common Dreams.
