Decision puts pro-Israel organisation in a group alongside Newsmax, TMZ, and the conspiracist website Infowars
Wikipedia's editors voted to declare the Anti-Defamation League "generally unreliable" on Israel and Palestine as well as the issue of antisemitism, adding the organisation to a list of banned sources, according to a report by the Jewish Telegraph Agency (JTA).
The report said that an "overwhelming majority" of Wikipedia editors voted to deem the organisation unreliable.
The decision puts the pro-Israel organisation, which has a long history of demonising Palestine activism, in a group alongside the National Inquirer, Newsmax, TMZ, and the conspiracist website Infowars.
Many editors at the online encyclopedia said that the ADL undermined its credibility as a reliable source of information by altering how it categorises antisemitic incidents, which include pro-Palestine protests.
The editors also cited controversial statements by ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, who has claimed student protests were proxies of Iran and compared the Palestinian keffiyeh head scarf to the swastika.
The ADL also has a long history of attacking Palestinian rights movements with labels of antisemitism, and has previously worked with US law enforcement to spy on Arab-American groups. It has also facilitated and funded US police training trips to Israel.
There is consensus that outside of the topic of the Israel/Palestine conflict, the ADL is a generally reliable source, including for topics related to hate groups and extremism in the U.S. There is no consensus that ADL must be attributed in all cases, but there is consensus that the labelling of organisations and individuals by the ADL (particularly as antisemitic) should be attributed. Some editors consider the ADL's opinion pieces not reliable, and that they should only be used with attribution. Note that the ADL's reliability on antisemitism and the reliability of its database of hate symbols is currently being discussed.
There is consensus that the ADL is a generally unreliable source for the Israel/Palestine conflict, owing to occasional misinformation favoring the Israeli government with respect to the conflict.