Investigative reporter for @jewishjournal. Views expressed are my own. Send tips to aaronb@jewishjournal.com.
Georgetown Student Gov’t Postpones BDS Vote Initially Scheduled During Passover
The complaint was filed to the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) on April 3 alleging that the Santa Clara Unified School District (SCUSD) failed to properly address reported antisemitic incidents on their campuses. It was filed by the @StandWithUs Saidoff Legal division and the Bay Area Jewish Coalition, represented by David Rosenberg-Wohl of the Hershenson Rosenberg-Wohl, P.C. law firm.
Katrina Armstrong Resigns as Columbia President
The event was hosted by the university’s Students Supporting Israel (SSI) chapter and was part of SSI’s “Triggered, the Tour: From Combat to Campus” featuring IDF soldiers speaking at 25 campuses across the United States and Canada. The two soldiers who spoke at CSUSM had both served in the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, according to a post on the SSI chapter’s Instagram page. Hillel San Diego Executive Director Karen Parry wrote in a March 27 letter to community members that “Hillel staff supported student organizers and worked with the University to confirm that safety measures were in place. We had received information prior to the event that several external non-student organizations as well as on-campus student organizations were leading a protest to seek canceling the event.”
“On Nov. 6, 2024, myself and another student, who’s also an IDF [Israel Defense Force] reservist, were tabling for Israel,” he said. “We do this every single week on Wednesdays right around 1-3 pm on our campus trying to engage people in conversation about Israel, about misconceptions that people might have about the Jewish people or about Israel. And two people wearing ski masks physically attacked us. One person came from the front and was talking to us simply to distract us, while another person came from behind and started the assault. They battered us, and then eventually got up [and] ran away. We were left with pretty harsh injuries.”
The Forward reported in January that it had obtained documents purportedly outlining Heritage’s plan to “identify and target” the editors, which included the use of “facial recognition software and a database of hacked usernames and passwords in order to identify contributors to the online encyclopedia… The Heritage Foundation sent the pitch deck outlining the Wikipedia initiative to Jewish foundations and other prospective supporters of Project Esther, its roadmap for fighting antisemitism and anti-Zionism. ” A spokesperson for Heritage told The Forward that they couldn’t comment on the matter. Mike Howell, executive director of the think tank’s investigative arm, was in The New Yorker on March 4 that Heritage’s “investigation” of Wikipedia will be provided to “the appropriate policymakers to help inform a strategic response.”
On Dec. 9, Wikipedia’s Arbitration Committee (ArbCom), the site’s version of a Supreme Court, sanctioned three editors over their purported involvement in a Wikipedia channel on the “Tech for Palestine” (TFP) Discord server.
Middle East historian @ARomirowsky, who heads Scholars for Peace in the Middle East and the Association for Study in the Middle East and North Africa, has previously told me that this sentence in the Wikipedia page is “false” because “there are [an] abundance of diplomatic correspondents of looking to find ways for coexistence and the fact of the matter is that all those Arabs who stayed in the land and became the Arab Israelis … they became naturalized citizens because of that earlier desire for coexistence between the population of the land.” My previous reporting highlighted how the sentence resulted from anti-Israel editors primarily citing anti-Zionist historians and appearing to take a passage from one of renowned Israeli historian Benny Morris’ books out of context.
“Free Palestine” Graffiti on UMich Provost’s Home
The complaints, filed to the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, alleged that the three schools violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act for ignoring “severe antisemitic harassment and discrimination,” according to a press release.
Bussigny, who has been investigating French Wikipedia for nearly two years, learned that an announcement was shared on the site’s internal channels to “join the Palestine contributors club” and “apply the ethical principles of Wikipedia and those of the Palestinian resistance for an encyclopedia where justice triumphs.” According to Bussigny’s story, the announcement originated from, and was organized by, the Urgence Palestine (Palestine Emergency) collective; the club’s co-founder, an activist at the collective, has claimed that the club is independent from any political group––including Urgence Palestine––and that Urgence Palestine promoted it at his request.
ArbCom is Wikipedia’s highest dispute resolution board consisting of 15 members (one of whom is currently inactive) elected by the community, serving two-year terms; ArbCom only deals with editor conduct, not article content and is the option of last resort when all other means of dispute resolution have failed. As of the publication time, the committee has votes in favor of indefinitely topic banning “Selfstudier,” “Nableezy,” “Nishidani,” “Levivich,” “Iskandar323,” “Makeandtoss,” “BilledMammal” and “AndreJustAndre” and providing a warning to “Zero0000,” an administrator. ArbCom’s proposed decision states that all these editors engaged in “disruptive behavior,” a catch-all term referring to anything that makes it more difficult to edit articles and violates Wikipedia norms and policies. The disruptive behavior that these editors engaged in included non-neutral editing, edit warring and incivility, per the proposed decision.
Wikipedia editors decided to rename the “2024 Nuseirat rescue operation” article to “Nuseirat rescue and massacre” after enough editors insisted that the only way the article title could be neutral is if “massacre” is included.
Rep. Gottheimer Condemns Rutgers Faculty Unions’ BDS Support
UMich Jewish Regent’s Home, Wife’s Car Vandalized
“The name Yahya means the one who lives. They thought of him as dead but he lives. Like his namesake, Yahya bin Zakariya, he will live on and they will be gone.”
The discussion over whether or not to add “Gaza genocide” to the list began in July; those in favor argued that it was only natural to include after an article title was changed from “Allegations of genocide in the 2023 Israeli attack on Gaza” to “Gaza genocide” earlier the month. They also argued that it fits the list’s inclusion criteria for “acts which are recognized in significant scholarship as genocides” and that other genocides on the list are considered controversial, such as Rohingya genocide and Darfur genocide. Those opposed to inclusion contended that the allegation that Israel is committing genocide in the Gaza Strip is too widely disputed to warrant mentioning it in a neutral voice (wikivoice) in the article, especially when the International Court of Justice has yet to make a ruling on the matter.
A formal discussion known as a Request for Comment (RfC) was launched in July; in RfCs, editors put in their “!votes” supporting their stated position on a contested issue and a closer (an uninvolved Wikipedian in good standing) renders a verdict based on the numbers and strength of the arguments in regards to site policy. Because Wikipedia articles are supposed to reflect what reliable sources say, editors sparred over whether or not sources use such a qualifier when citing the ministry’s numbers and if sources view the ministry’s numbers as reliable.
A university spokesperson told The Journal, “Columbia has consistently and continually respected Assistant Professor Davidai’s right to free speech and to express his views. His freedom of speech has not been limited and is not being limited now. Columbia, however, does not tolerate threats of intimidation, harassment or other threatening behavior by its employees. Because Assistant Professor Davidai repeatedly harassed and intimidated University employees in violation of University policy, we have temporarily limited his access to campus while he undertakes appropriate training on our policies governing the behavior of our employees.” According to a university official, Davidai’s suspension is the result of him harassing university employees on Oct. 7, but did not elaborate further. The university official added that Davidai is not suspended, but restricted from campus and that his compensation or status as a faculty member is not affected.
Wikipedia operates by consensus, a combination of numbers and argument strength regarding site policy. Dating back to March of this year, an overwhelming majority of editors have argued on the talk page of the article it’s kosher under Wikipedia policy to use “ethnic cleansing” in a neutral voice (wikivoice) because it’s the mainstream academic view.
The opening sentence of the Wikipedia article states: “Zionism is an ethno-cultural nationalist movement that emerged in Europe in the late 19th century and aimed for the establishment of a Jewish state through the colonization of a land outside of Europe.” Middle East historian @ARomirowsky, who heads @Scholars4Peace and the Association for Study in the Middle East and North Africa, told me that the sentence implies that “Jews are Europeans and they’ve colonized the land” and that “scholars who recognize the connection between the land and the Jewish people and the evolution that Zionism is Jewish nationalism based on ancestral ties to the land itself from Biblical times all the way to modern times, that would be the honest way to look at it.” Those who promulgate the narrative that Zionism is settler-colonialism try to “weaken the claim that the people and Israel are connected” and that Israel stole the land from the Palestinians is “ahistorical.” Tel Aviv University Vice Rector Eyal Zisser told me that “it’s not a matter of colonization, it’s a matter of feeling if any nation has its own right for self-determination and a state, Jews should also have this right and they should fulfill it in their historical homeland.” Zisser also said regarding the Wikipedia article’s use of the term “ethno-cultural nationalist” that “it’s the national movement of the Jews” and that “Polish nationalism or Italian nationalism” would not be discussed “in the same manner.”