Wikipedia supports Israhell - who would have guessed?

[yankeedoodle]

Apparently, Wiki-jew Jimmy Wales, the Wikipedia propagandist, has gotten all upset about the prospect that "anti-semite" Jeremy Corbin might be Britain's next Prime Minister, and has made very public his support for Israhell.

Now, who would have thunk it that Wiki-jew Jimmy would side with Israhell?  I mean, after all, a few years ago, he said that he "likes Israel but stays neutral" when Israhell gave him a million dollars.  Now, do you think that changed his mind?   

Wikipedia founder Wales sides with Israel against Gaza, suggests Corbyn is 'antisemite'
https://mondoweiss.net/2018/08/wikipedia-suggests-antisemite/

Jimmy Wales the founder of Wikipedia has disappointed a lot of folks in the last day by siding with Israel over the latest exchange of fire between Israel and Gaza, and by essentially accusing British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn of anti-semitism. Here's the Wales's tweet that began it all yesterday:

150 rockets fired at Israel by Hamas. @jeremycorbyn silent.

Wales was promptly called to account and defended his tweet:

I think it is fairly obvious what it has to do with Jeremy Corbyn but happy to explain. He feels unfairly portrayed as one who doesn't think Israel has a right to exist or engage in self-defense against "friends in Hamas" then he may wish to speak clearly against this attack.

Wales made no mention of the Israeli attacks on the Strip, which killed three including a 23-year-old mother and her infant child. Gazan rockets injured at least six Israelis "bodily".

In twitter exchanges, Wales said that Corbyn should use the Gaza rockets as an opportunity to immunize himself from the anti-Semitism charge, whether or not it is reasonable!

I am not a politician being accused of antisemitism so it seems less relevant that I condemn every atrocity in the world. For Corbyn this was a moment to show that he isn't what people are reasonably or not thinking that he is.

He elaborated by suggesting that it is "realistic" to conclude that Corbyn is an anti-Semite:

He had a chance to show he isn't an antisemite. He didn't. As a BEST case scenario it shows he is tone deaf. As a realistic scenario...

Wales cites a recent controversy:

But given the current environment when he has caught on film questioning the right of Israel to exist on Iranian new channel... He had an opportunity to show he really is a man of peace.

This is a reference to a recently-publicized clip of Corbyn on Iranian television in 2011 saying that because of "pressure" campaigns from Israel and its friends, the BBC demonstrates a bias toward Israel's right to exist.

"I think there is a bias towards saying that Israel is a democracy in the Middle East, Israel has a right to exist, Israel has its security concerns," [Corbyn said]

The Labour Party responded to the resulting controversy:

"Jeremy was arguing that despite the occupation of Palestinian territory and the lack of a Palestinian state, Israeli concerns and perspectives are more likely to appear prominently in news reporting than Palestinian ones.

​"Jeremy is committed to a comprehensive peace in the Middle East based on a two-state solution – a secure Israel alongside a secure and viable state of Palestine.

Wales, 52, was born in the U.S. and built his career here and moved to London in 2012. He founded Wikipedia in 2001 and has said he's the sole founder, though Wikipedia says he is the co-founder, having done so with "Larry Sanger and others."

Wales has a long association with Israel. Three years ago he accepted a $1 million prize from Israel and defended the country, which he said he'd visited more than ten times.

While Wikipedia strives for objectivity on Israel, Wales is unabashedly pro. The annual Wikimania conference, hosted by the nonprofit that runs Wikipedia, was held in the northern Israeli city of Haifa in 2011, and Wales appeared at the Israeli Presidential Conference that year.

Ahead of the Haifa conference, Wales defended Israel in a Facebook exchange with a pro-Palestinian activist, Joey Ayoub, that Ayoub subsequently published. Responding to Ayoub's accusations of Israeli apartheid, Wales wrote, "How about those rockets? Complaining any about those?" ...

"I'm a strong supporter of Israel, so I don't listen to those critics," Wales told JTA.

Wales said he backs Israel for "all of the standard reasons — the support for freedom of speech is very important to me, the rights of women, proper democracy. You can support all those things while still having criticism of actions and policies that aren't good."

Ofer Neiman has responded to the latest rockets tweet:

Jimmy Wales, I'm an Israeli citizen. You are consistently silent (no, make that supportive of) an Israeli #apartheid regime which has killed thousands of Palestinian children. Oh, your hypocrisy.

...the root problem is a murderous Israeli siege on an impoverished open-air prison inhabited mostly by Palestinian refugees of Israel's 1948 ethnic cleansing.

Jimmy Wales, how can you be so oblivious to the underlying reality of occupation and siege? Here's some useful information from an Israeli woman living near Gaza:

Dave Berkeley, an eco socialist responds:

That is the most depressing tweet I've seen for a long time. Wikipedia is one of the great achievements of our age. I didn't realise Wales was like this. Time to fork wikipedia.

Wales was in Israel — he's been here more than 10 times, he says — to accept the Dan David Prize, an international award of $1 million given yearly at Tel Aviv University. Wales was chosen for spearheading what the prize committee called the "information revolution."   

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales likes Israel but stays neutral
https://www.timesofisrael.com/wikipedia-founder-jimmy-wales-likes-israel-but-stays-neutral/

For the creator of the world's biggest on-line information source, the pressures to keep things politically 'straight' are many
By BEN SALES
19 May 2015, 1:50 pm 

TEL AVIV (JTA) — In 2003, two years after the website was founded, the editors of Wikipedia faced a dilemma: How should they refer to the part-fence, part-wall Israel was building along the West Bank border?

The article's first iteration — published amid the bloody second intifada, or Palestinian uprising — called it a "security fence" and focused on Israeli support. Within a half-hour, another editor added a sentence about a United Nations condemnation. Later that day, the phrase "apartheid wall" appeared, using the Palestinians' preferred term.

Following thousands of edits on the free online, crowdsourced encyclopedia, the article now calls it the "Israeli West Bank barrier" and links to a list of alternative names, from "separation fence" to "wall of apartheid."

"The right thing to do, if you're new to the issue, is you should be told what is this debate about," Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, told JTA on Sunday during an interview here. "That's a struggle. You have to be taught about those issues. You don't want to, in an unclear way, use language that carries with it a hidden conclusion."

Wales was in Israel — he's been here more than 10 times, he says — to accept the Dan David Prize, an international award of $1 million given yearly at Tel Aviv University. Wales was chosen for spearheading what the prize committee called the "information revolution."

"We could come together and give the great gift to the world of a free encyclopedia for every single person on the planet," Wales said during his acceptance speech, describing Wikipedia's mission. "Wikipedia is not just this one website but a movement to share knowledge globally."

Wales prizes neutrality on Wikipedia, which is translated into 288 languages, including Hebrew, Yiddish and Ladino. Few topics present as great a challenge to that value as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, where every word or snippet of information can be imbued with ideology. His response is to provide as many facts as possible, aiming to overwhelm any chance of bias.

"You can imagine some historical incident where [the late Israeli Prime Minister] Ariel Sharon said this, [the late Palestinian Authority President Yasser] Arafat said that," Wales told JTA. "You present what all sides have said and leave it to the reader to come to the answer."

Not all Israel advocates agree. In 2010, the right-wing Israeli organization My Israel recruited activists to edit Israel-related Wikipedia articles and give them a Zionist slant. Wales said nothing came of the effort, though now only registered Wikipedia editors may edit the "Israel" entry.

Rather than risking bias, each Wikipedia article's multiplicity of voices makes it more valuable, says Hagit Meishar-Tal, a professor at the Holon Institute of Technology who studies Wikipedia's influence in the classroom. Readers who peruse histories and discussions among Wikipedia editors, she said, can gain a deeper understanding of an issue.

"This discussion can create relevant information on where there's disagreement, on what the arguments are between Wikipedians," Meishar-Tal said. "The mechanism tries to create consensus, and that's a beautiful thing."

While Wikipedia strives for objectivity on Israel, Wales is unabashedly pro. The annual Wikimania conference, hosted by the nonprofit that runs Wikipedia, was held in the northern Israeli city of Haifa in 2011, and Wales appeared at the Israeli Presidential Conference that year.

Ahead of the Haifa conference, Wales defended Israel in a Facebook exchange with a pro-Palestinian activist, Joey Ayoub, that Ayoub subsequently published. Responding to Ayoub's accusations of Israeli apartheid, Wales wrote, "How about those rockets? Complaining any about those?" Presumably he was referring to Hamas shooting rockets into Israel from Gaza.

"I'm a strong supporter of Israel, so I don't listen to those critics," Wales told JTA.

Wales said he backs Israel for "all of the standard reasons — the support for freedom of speech is very important to me, the rights of women, proper democracy. You can support all those things while still having criticism of actions and policies that aren't good."

After this trip Wales, whose work has largely been not-for-profit, will return $900,000 richer (10 percent of the prize goes to doctoral students).

Along with Wales, this year's Dan David Prize was awarded to historians Alessandro Portelli and Peter Brown, and bioinformaticians Cyrus Chothia, David Haussler and Michael Waterman. In the past, figures such as former Vice President Al Gore and filmmakers Joel and Ethan Cohen have won the award.