The new Hasbara-esque scandal (but worse) Options

[yow]

From Electronic Intifada

A pro-Israel pressure group is orchestrating a secret, long-term campaign to infiltrate the popular online encyclopedia Wikipedia to rewrite Palestinian history, pass off crude propaganda as fact, and take over Wikipedia administrative structures to ensure these changes go either undetected or unchallenged.

A series of emails by members and associates of the pro-Israel group CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America), provided to The Electronic Intifada (EI), indicate the group is engaged in what one activist termed a "war" on Wikipedia.

A 13 March action alert signed by Gilead Ini, a "Senior Research Analyst" at CAMERA, calls for "volunteers who can work as 'editors' to ensure" that Israel-related articles on Wikipedia are "free of bias and error, and include necessary facts and context." However, subsequent communications indicate that the group not only wanted to keep the effort secret from the media, the public, and Wikipedia administrators, but that the material they intended to introduce included discredited claims that could smear Palestinians and Muslims and conceal Israel's true history.


AND MUCH MORE.

[Somey]

More discussion on this subject is taking place in this thread...

But I'd say the WP reaction has so far been one of yammering and general confusion, just like their reaction to pretty much everything. They blocked User:Zeq for a year, though... ironically, the block had nothing to do with Zeq's involvement in an Israeli-propaganda meat-puppeting scheme, but rather he was blocked for violating WP's No Personal Attacks policy by calling User:ChrisO a "poopyhead."