Arabic Wikipedia Riddled With Terror Propaganda and Bias, New Investigation Shows

Arabic-language Wikipedia is riddled with systemic bias and extreme terrorist propaganda, a new investigation shows, raising serious questions about the reliability of one of the world’s most widely used information sources and exposing millions of readers worldwide to potentially harmful content.

On Tuesday, the World Jewish Congress’s Institute for Technology and Human Rights released a report revealing that Arabic-language Wikipedia content repeatedly violates the platform’s core neutrality rules, specifically in articles covering the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

Extremist influence runs deep in major Wikipedia articles, with 25 to over 50 percent of citations drawn from Hamas, Hezbollah, and other terrorist propaganda sources, spreading radical narratives and terror-supporting content to millions of readers worldwide.

The World Jewish Congress (WJC)’s latest findings also reveal that the terrorist groups Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are often described as legitimate resistance factions, while attacks on civilians are labeled “martyrdom operations.”

Some articles go further, not only referring to designated terrorists as “martyrs” but also celebrating suicide bombings and attacks on civilians as historical “achievements.”

“This report demonstrates that one of the world’s most trusted knowledge platforms is being systematically manipulated to promote extremist narratives,” Yfat Barak-Cheney, executive director of WJC’s Institute for Technology and Human Rights, said in a statement.

“When terrorist propaganda and hate-driven narratives are allowed to masquerade as neutral information, the consequences extend far beyond Wikipedia itself. These distortions shape public understanding and views of Jews and Israelis across the Arabic-speaking world,” she continued.

In one of its most recent controversies, Wikipedia came under fire last month after a human rights group allegedly linked to Hamas began training Palestinians to edit pages on Israel and the war in Gaza, raising fears of anti-Israel propaganda and antisemitic content on the platform.

According to WJC, the newly released report shows that manipulated Wikipedia content is creating worldwide risks by influencing public discourse and the AI systems that millions rely on, allowing biased information to extend far beyond the site itself.

The report recommends that technology companies and search engines put safeguards in place when using Wikipedia content for AI training and search systems until meaningful reforms are implemented.

“We call on [the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that operates the Wikipedia website,] to take urgent action to restore neutrality and accountability on Arabic Wikipedia, including enforcing existing neutrality standards, removing administrators who enable extremist propaganda, and implementing centralized monitoring mechanisms for terrorism-related content,” the statement read.

Last year, the US House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, opened an investigation into the Wikimedia Foundation, demanding answers over concerns that hostile foreign actors are exploiting the online encyclopedia to insert anti-Israel or antisemitic framing designed to sway audiences.

Months earlier, the US Justice Department warned the Wikimedia Foundation that its nonprofit status could be jeopardized for possibly violating its “legal obligations and fiduciary responsibilities” under US law. 

Specifically, US officials expressed concern about accusations that the online encyclopedia has spread “propaganda” and allowed “foreign actors to manipulate information” while maintaining a systemic bias against Israel.

“Wikipedia has long presented itself as humanity’s shared knowledge repository,” Barak-Cheney said in a statement on Tuesday. “Ensuring that this knowledge remains factual is particularly critical as emerging AI platforms increasingly rely on multilingual information sources to formulate responses to user queries.”