Wikipedia Editors Title Article “Israeli Apartheid”

Wikipedia editors have renamed an article from “Israel and apartheid” to “Israeli apartheid” following a short discussion over the summer that received little pushback.

A longtime editor who runs a blog called “The Wikipedia Flood” wrote in a Sept. 19 post that in 2023, the article had been titled “Israel and apartheid” and the opening paragraph had stated: “Israel is accused by international, Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups of committing the crime of apartheid under the 2002 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, both in the occupied Palestinian territories and, by some, in Israel proper. Israel and its supporters deny the charges.” Under the “Israeli apartheid” title, the opening paragraph now states: “Israeli apartheid is a system of institutionalized segregation and discrimination in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories and to a lesser extent in Israel proper. This system is characterized by near-total physical separation between the Palestinian and the Israeli settler population of the West Bank, as well as the judicial separation that governs both communities, which discriminates against the Palestinians in a wide range of ways. Israel also discriminates against Palestinian refugees in the diaspora and against its own Palestinian citizens.”

As I’ve previously written, a discussion regarding changing the title of a Wikipedia article is known as a “Requested move” (RM) in wiki-parlance. Wikipedia policy states that an article’s title is usually from the most common name used in reliable sources (WP:COMMONNAME) . The RM discussion started on July 20, a day after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued a nonbinding ruling determining that Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem violate international law.  Editors in favor of changing the title contended that the ICJ ruling — and how it’s being reported — as well as more scholarly literature using the term “Israeli apartheid” warranted a change.

“The ICJ ruling yesterday by the world’s highest court that this occupation constitutes apartheid was the cherry on the top,” the editor, who posts under the name “Makeandtoss,” who started the RM discussion, wrote. “This move is long overdue, it is time to call a spade a spade.” Makeandtoss pointed to reporting in Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, The Guardian and Financial Times as evidence.

Another editor, “Iskandar323,” contended that the ICJ ruling “confirms the presence of systematic discrimination and racial segregation — affirming the findings of the numerous human rights bodies.” The editor also argued that Google Scholar searches to show that the term “Israeli apartheid” is “very much rooted in scholarly usage.”

Wikipedia is based on consensus, a combination of numbers and argument quality in regards to site policy; usually a supermajority is required for there to be consensus for a change, if the argument strength is equal. Sometimes a closer (an uninvolved Wikipedian in good standing) is needed to render a verdict on the discussion. Because there was barely any pushback to the proposed change, the discussion was closed two weeks later in favor of the “Israeli apartheid” title.

“There was little substantive discussion at all,” The Wikipedia Flood blog claimed. “Not a single editor objected … While the lack of interest in this title change is startling, as is the lack of pushback into the article’s gradual transformation into blatant Hamas propaganda, that’s not really surprising. The pro-Hamas editors are well-organized offsite and, above all, far more numerous than the editors who might oppose them. They can branch out all around Wikipedia and bring their friends with them.”

“While the lack of interest in this title change is startling, as is the lack of pushback into the article’s gradual transformation into blatant Hamas propaganda, that’s not really surprising. The pro-Hamas editors are well-organized offsite and, above all, far more numerous than the editors who might oppose them. They can branch out all around Wikipedia and bring their friends with them.” – The Wikipedia Flood (blog)

George Mason University Professor Eugene Kontorovich told me, “It is completely false that the ICJ’s recent advisory opinion accused Israel of apartheid. The opinion of the Court simply said no such thing, though a few individual judges did — but their position was NOT accepted by the Court. In any case, an ICJ Advisory opinion is not a ruling in a case, does not involving hearing and reviewing evidence, and has absolutely no legal or precedential weight. As for claims of racial segregation in Israel, such problems are ubiquitous in Western countries; the U.N. has condemned the United States for ‘systematic racism’ in law enforcement — and the issue of police shootings of black men is well known — but that does not [make] American an apartheid state. Yet Wikipedia does not speak of Palestinian Apartheid, despite the [Palestinian Authority] government having an explicit program of extrajudicial killing of Jews (pay for slay); forbids Jews living anywhere in its territory; and erases Jews from history and culture. Moreover, the leaders of Western democracies – from left to right -have uniformly rejected the Apartheid charges.”

Asaf Romirowsky, who heads Scholars for Peace Middle East and the Association of Study in the Middle East and North Africa, called the Wikipedia article’s title and opening paragraph a “work of fiction … The entire Palestinian narrative is based on OPT [Occupied Palestinian Territories] and there’s nothing factual about any of the claims made by the ICJ, and it doesn’t look realistically at the state of Israel and the Arab population,” he said. “There’s no apartheid in Israel. This is all part of the fallacy that has been sold and validated by these international groups — Human Rights Watch, the ICJ — because this is exactly where they want to wage these allegations against Israel. They’re not rooted in reality.”

An editor told me that “it looks like only pro-Hamas editors knew about it to weigh in … Hard to get the cat back in the bag. Not that [the] ‘Israel and apartheid’ [title] is much better. ‘Allegations of apartheid in Israel’ might be more NPOV but longer. The longer the article title stays at this, the harder it is to change it back because it has the consensus of lengthy time without objection, and a drive-by re-RM will probably go down in flames.” The editor noted that “the longer it stays at this title, the less likely another name will be the more common name,” as sources like AJ+ and Human Rights Watch use the term; even sources that dispute that Israel is committing apartheid against the Palestinians are pushing back against allegations of “Israeli apartheid.”

“Of course, a consensus of editors could find that POVTITLE overrides that,” the editor continued, referencing Wikipedia policy stating that a title needs to comply with the site’s Neutral Point of View (NPOV) policy. “But [it] would need a critical mass of pro-Israel editors to know about the RM, and have it be closed with a consensus to move again — much harder now that any [no consensus] is status quo.” The editor claimed that “a lot of turf has been given up by banning or topic-banning pro-Israel editors with thin justifications … and scaring others.”

Another editor told me that the RM discussion was basically “an echo chamber” and that something similar occurred when in August, the “Palestinian territories” Wikipedia article was renamed to “Occupied Palestinian Territories” following the ICJ ruling. The editor argued that “if there isn’t diverse debate, none of these [discussions] should go through.”