ADL: Wikipedia's Distortions on Israel, Hamas and October 7 by Banned Editors Remain Largely Unrepaired

New York, NY, October 15, 2026 …  More than a year after ADL exposed a coordinated, multi-year campaign to inject antisemitic and anti-Israel narratives into Wikipedia, much of the biased editing remains in place across the encyclopedia’s most-read pages on Israel, Zionism, Hamas, and the October 7 attacks.  
 

A new report from the ADL Center for Technology and Society, Damage Done: Wikipedia Leaves Biased Edits Unchecked Despite Editor Bans, finds that although six editors were banned from the topic area and three were barred from editing on the site altogether, none of their work was systematically reviewed, let alone corrected. The new report also finds that biased editing has continued through quieter techniques, undoing other editors' changes to hold a framing in place, hedging factual claims, and rebuilding articles slowly enough that no single edit draws attention. 
 

These pages continue to flow into AI training pipelines, Large Language Model (LLM) outputs, and search engine results, carrying their distortions with them and influencing how millions of readers encounter this information. 
 

This new report follows ADL's March 2025 investigation, Editing for Hate, which documented coordination among approximately 30 bad-faith editors to shift balanced narratives on Wikipedia pages covering Israel, Jewish history, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, spotlighting criticism of Israel and downplaying Palestinian terrorist violence and antisemitism. ADL’s new analysis shows that while this coordinated activity fell dramatically — by about 95 percent — amid congressional, federal, and platform scrutiny following publication, a new cohort has carried the work of biased editing forward.  
 

“Banning individual editors was never going to be enough. The pages that millions of people read, and that AI tools learn from, still bear the marks of a systematic disinformation campaign that Wikipedia itself has sanctioned but never cleaned up,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, ADL CEO and National Director. “The most visited online encyclopedia that claims neutrality has to be willing to repair its own record. The Wikimedia Foundation should audit this work, and the companies that build search and AI products should stop presenting contested framing as settled fact.” 
 

Key findings include: 

• Past edits stand. On six flagship articles examined, including “Hamas,” “Gaza war,” “Zionism” and “October 7 attacks,” 91 percent of one site-banned editor's work remain in the live text. On the “Gaza war” page, forensic documentation of the October 7 atrocities that this editor removed, including evidence of sexual violence, has not been restored. 

• Coordinated editing has gone quiet. ADL’s review found 19 accounts actively editing Israel- and Palestine-related articles: eight unsanctioned editors from the original group and 11 newly identified ones. The techniques are slightly different; more subtle and defensible under Wikipedia's rules, while still reshaping what readers encounter. 

• The new cohort holds the last word. Across 229 articles edited by two or more of these accounts, the 11 newly identified editors hold the most recent edit, which is effectively the page's current text, on roughly six in 10. Several are among the principal authors of Wikipedia's pages on October 7 sexual violence, where a skeptical framing has been defended through at least 89 reverts. 

 
“Even in cases where the Wikipedia community took some modicum of action against editors who went against their policies, the activities of that banned editor remains — in this case activity over numerous years driving an ideological narrative in flagrant violation of the neutral point of view policy of the platform,” said Daniel Kelley, senior director of CTS. “This speaks to a systematic issue with how Wikimedia allows their platform to operate, and it is something they have the responsibility to address.” 
 

Notable examples from the report: 
 

• The “Hamas” article was restructured three days after October 7. On October 10, 2023, one editor moved most of the material on Hamas's antisemitism, human shields, child combatants and human rights abuses into a far less-read “Criticism of Hamas” article. The main page was drawing close to one million views a day at the time. Today, the lead does not identify Hamas as a designated terrorist organization until the very end of the section. This is among the most visual and quotable examples. 

• The “Gaza war” article was stripped of the October 7 forensic record. About 17,000 characters of text and citations were removed in November 2023, including documentation that victims were bound with wire and burned, evidence of sexual violence and video evidence of an attempted decapitation. Roughly 7,400 more characters of what remained were cut two days later. What’s left is one line saying terrorists “reportedly engaged” in such violence. 

• The “Zionism” article states contested claims as fact. The lead defines Zionism as achieved “through colonization” and says Zionists sought a state with “as few Palestinian Arabs as possible.” Wikipedia's own editors have internally flagged this as disputed. One newly identified account made 543 edits to the page, the second most of anyone in its 24-year history. It added about 193,000 characters and removed about 188,000, a net change of under 5,000. The length barely changed, but the content almost entirely did. 

• The October 7 sexual violence case study. Editors named in the report made 832 of 9,576 revisions (roughly one in 11) across four related pages and their discussion pages. On the “Sexual and gender-based violence in the October 7 attacks” page, they worked to preserve a framing that Israeli women and girls were “reportedly” subjected to sexual violence during the October 7 attacks. That framing still stands three years later, and several reports confirming this violence.  

• The Bibas family. In the weeks after the bodies of Shiri, Kfir, and Ariel Bibas were returned in February 2025, one never-sanctioned editor made 64 edits to the article and its discussion page. Those edits held the manner of their deaths open, even though Israeli forensic authorities concluded they were murdered in captivity.  

ADL renews four structural recommendations it first made to the Wikimedia Foundation in 2025: require private identity verification for editors in contentious topic areas, end anonymous IP editing on sensitive pages, merit-based closure of disputed content debates and a dedicated task force on antisemitic bias. The report adds a new call for a structured content audit of articles heavily edited by banned editors, beginning with the flagship articles examined. It also urges search engines and AI developers to disclose when Wikipedia is the source of an answer and urges policymakers to continue oversight. 

Read the full report here. 

ADL is the leading anti-hate organization in the world. Founded in 1913 to protect the Jewish people, ADL works to stop the defamation of the Jewish people and secure justice and fair treatment to all. In the face of rising antisemitism and extremism, we protect, advocate, and educate, through a mix of programs and services using the latest innovations and technology, and seek to create a world without hate. More at adl.org.