Figure 7 – Before & After: Edits to ‘Israel-Palestinian conflict’ page on Wikipedia

In examining the two versions of the article on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, it is evident that the language used and the omission of references to Palestinian militant attacks indicate a bias against Israel. This concern was raised in November 2007 by a user named Jaakobou, who advocated for changes in terminology and a more nuanced representation of the situation. However, the community ultimately rejected his proposal in a debate in which he was heavily outnumbered (see Figure 4). 

Yet, comparing the July 2023 version to the March 2025 one reveals that the article has become significantly more biased over time. In the 2023 version, the opening paragraph states that “various attempts have been made to resolve the conflict as part of the Israeli–Palestinian peace process, alongside other efforts to address the broader Arab–Israeli conflict.” While earlier edit also mention Israel’s success in making peace with Arab countries such as Egypt and Jordan, the 2023 article is less biased than the current one, as it emphasizes the overall attempts made for reconciliation. 

In the opening paragraph of the 2025 version, the peace process is entirely absent. Instead, the opening line frames the conflict as focused on “land and self-determination.” 

The first paragraph of the July 2023 version states that “the Mandate for Palestine included a binding obligation for the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people,” while in the March 2025 version, this significant assertion is relegated to the second paragraph, subtly downplaying the legal-historical basis of Jewish national claims and reshaping the narrative hierarchy of the article. 

The growth of bias over time is most evident when examining the second paragraph of both versions. While the older version focuses on the Oslo Accords of 1993–1995, the March 2025 article presents a one-sided perspective that attributes the conflict to Zionist “colonization,” neglecting to mention that the Jewish people are native to the land; that they have no other motherland that is part of the conceptualization of colonization, and that Jews have lived on the land for thousands of years as a minority, encountering violence long before the Zionist movement consolidated, such as in the Hebron massacre of 1834.

The paragraph’s conclusion that “eventually tensions led to the United Nations adopting a partition plan in 1947, triggering a civil war,” misrepresents the sequence and causes of events. It fails to acknowledge that the war was initiated by Arab nations and began when they rejected the UN Partition Plan and initiated violence, despite the Jewish community’s acceptance of the proposal. By framing the war as a consequence of the Partition Plan itself, the article obscures the Arabs’ part in the events, contributing to a distorted understanding of the conflict. It illustrates the way in which historical narratives can be shaped to reinforce political biases, which in turn can fuel antisemitism and perpetuate the conflict.

Similar to the “Zionism” article, here, too, the authorship statistics reveal the takeover of one user, DMH223344, who is in fact the same anti-Israel editor who was later temporarily topic-banned and who is responsible for about a third of the article’s content.

Figure 9 – User DMH223344, an editor later temporarily topic-banned for anti-Israel bias, is shown to be responsible  for 33.1% of the article’s content, a disproportionate amount that suggests a takeover.