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Comment by kstenerud | Hacker News Reader

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Israel Palestine war aside, there's been a lot of controversies about Wikipedia lately. Two of them were the presumably still unfixed content distortion and bias incidents on Native American topics and the Holocaust in Poland.

https://slate.com/technology/2023/02/wikipedia-native-americ...

https://forward.com/opinion/550600/wikipedia-holocaust-disin...

Not to mention that there are alleged systemic biases against non-European narratives.

https://www.worldreligionnews.com/wikipedia/wikipedia-and-bu...

A research paper essentially confirmed what many Wikipedia insiders, ex-editors and critics are trying to say - Wikipedia has a toxicity problem.

https://theconversation.com/wikipedias-volunteer-editors-are...

Sure, I don't doubt that there's genuine ideology-driven misinformation campaigns on Wikipedia (who wouldn't try it on the central source of trusted information?)

But the author's focus on the Zionism thing is just plain weird.

It's up for debate regarding the author's focus, but one thing remain clear is that Wikipedia is overrated for some time and many choose not to see the nuances or issues that come with it. Just look at this one where one even accused me of "unhealthy obsession" against Wikipedia.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41691168

I suspect that those crazy fans of Elizabeth Holmes may have used the same aspersions against critics when John Carreyou published the article back then.

Original comment:

"I don't get it... Zionism is a colonizing ideology (recover the Holy Land), and Israel is colonizing Palestine. What's the problem with noting that?"

Reply:

The problem is that Adolf Hitler exterminated 5 million Jewish people. Obviously, the rest of the Jewish population didn't want to be treated as second-class citizens in Europe. So, they want a home. Do you not want shelter?

Edit: I understand my answer doesn't directly address your concern but it does take precedence in my opinion.

Consider this, when you say "Israel is colonizing Palestine" it implies that Israel has a home base and this is an external arm. It implies that this is just an extracurricular thing for Israel to do, not a fight for its survival which it clearly is.

Instead, you could say that "Many Jewish people are fighting for a home."

When a populace is displaced by war, famine, genocide etc, they become refugees in other nations. But for some reason in this particular case, it's okay for them to in turn displace another people who are already established in Palestine (a completely different country from the ones they fled)? Just because they want a territory of their own?

Should the Rwandan Tutsi be allowed to "fight for a home" in Egypt? Or maybe they should take Portugal?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com