Wikipedia’s editors have voted to declare the Anti-Defamation League “generally unreliable” on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, adding it to a list of banned and partially banned sources.An overwhelming majority of editors involved in the debate about the ADL also voted to deem the organization unreliable on the topic of antisemitism, its core focus.[I]n a near consensus, dozens of Wikipedia editors involved in the discussion said they believe the ADL should not be cited for factual information on antisemitism as well because it acts primarily as a pro-Israel organization and tends to label legitimate criticism of Israel as antisemitism.
I have had my problems with the ADL's bias (towards the Left) in recent years, but its antisemitism studies use the same methodology (with some adjustments) that they have for decades.
This chart from their latest survey of Americans' attitudes towards Jews shows a significant increase in antisemitism in 2022 and 2024, now at the highest levels in 60 years:
Jews stick together more than other Americans.Jews are not as honest as other businesspeople.Jews are not warm and friendly.Jews have a lot of irritating faults.Jews are more willing than others to use shady practices to get what they want.Jews have too much power in the United States today.Jews don’t care what happens to anyone but their own kind.Jews have too much control and influence on Wall Street.Jews in business are so shrewd that other people do not have a fair chance at competition.Jews have too much power in the business world.Jews do not share my values.Jews always like to be at the head of things.Jews are more loyal to Israel than to America.Jews in business go out of their way to hire other Jews.
While the ADL in its latest survey found correlations between anti-Israel and anti-Jewish attitudes, the methodology of their questions on classic antisemitism have no methodological flaws - and none of the Wikipedia editors who decided to delegitimize the ADL found any such flaws.
Which means that Wikipedia made this decision without giving a single tenable reason.
Keep in mind that this decision made by anonymous people in the most opaque way possible; the campaign to delegitimize the ADL was spearheaded by someone who calls themselves "Iskandar323" who created the Wikipedia page on "Nakba denial," so their own biases clearly do not disqualify them from making such a decision.
Now, let's look at the Wikipedia page on the Gaza Health Ministry:
The health ministry's casualty reports have received significant attention during the course of the Gaza–Israel conflict. Its numbers have historically been considered reliable by the United Nations, the World Health Organization, and Human Rights Watch.[1][2][3] In relation to the Israel-Hamas war, two scientific studies published in The Lancet journal did not find evidence of inflation or fabrication.[4][5]
The page is riddled with bias. For example, here's how it reports on one source:
Professor Michael Spagat stated that GHM provides very detailed and real-time information about casualties in the war, that far exceeds the quality of reporting from conflicts such as Ukraine.[27] He did note that this quality has declined over time, due to Israeli attacks on hospitals, and thus the GHM is relying on first responders and media sources. Writing in April 2024, Spagat also noted the deteriorating quality of data with hundreds of duplicate, missing or invalid IDs, accounting for roughly 1/7 of the total.[27]This severely downplays what Spagat actually wrote about the ministry's methodological problems:
This is not praise for accuracy. It is a description of a huge exaggeration of reported data. According to Spagat, who is quite sympathetic towards the health ministry, out of the total of 32,845 total deaths reported by the health ministry as of April 1, 44% - over 14,500 - are based on unreliable data (the numbers that the ministry attribute to "media sources" plus the ones that they released detailed data for but that had impossible ID numbers, duplicates or other data errors and omissions.)The MoH has stated repeatedly that since mid-November it has supplemented its substantially disabled CTS with further deaths culled from “reliable media sources.” As hospital reporting has declined this supplementary data-capture channel gained importance and now accounts for more than 1/3 of the 32,845 total deaths that were claimed by the MoH through April 1.Sky News reporter Ben van der Merwe pressed Mr. al Wahaidi to provide a database and methodology for this supplementary data collection but received neither. Instead, Mr. al Wahaidi asserted that the supplements integrate not just media sources but also reports from first responders.Here are some tentative conclusions we may gain from observing this new data set.First, the percentage of women and children killed does seem to be very high, roughly 60%, but the oft-cited claim [by the MoH - EoZ] that 70% of the Gazans killed in the conflict are women and children seems increasingly untenable. Indeed, in apparent disavowal of the 70% claim, Zaher al Wahaidi labelled this figure a “media estimate” that he could not explain.Second, the announced total number of Gazans killed in the war, now exceeding 33,000, may seem plausible but it is not a documented fact. This figure includes roughly 13,000 deaths that have, apparently, been entered into an unavailable database using an unknown methodology.
Director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, Ahmed al-Kahlot, denied that the GHM was unduly influenced by Hamas' control, stating that "Hamas is one of the factions. Some of us are aligned with Fatah, some are independent." and "More than anything, we are medical professionals."[15]
