Zionism on Wikipedia

For those of you who have been following my Wikipedia posts, you should be aware that Wikipedia is far from a neutral source of information, especially on controversial issues. Still, the public believes in Wikipedia as a neutral source of knowledge. This may be in part because most people do not have the time to read all of the pro and con arguments for every issue, and Wikipedia is both at the top of Google searches, and tends to give relevant information about a topic.

Ideologues have taken note about how Wikipedia sways public opinion, and have resorted to tactics on how to take it over. Susan Gerbic and her Guerilla Skeptics have been especially skilled at this, but they have not been the only group.
The nation of Israel has also noticed that Wikipedia sways public opinion, and has dedicated considerable time, effort, energy, and money toward helping Wikipedia reflect a pro-Zionist point of view. This effort has been overwhelmingly successful, as Wikipediocracy notes, despite that Zionism is a small minority view in the world.

Sam Lee of Wikipediocracy gives the following links in the article:
The right’s latest weapon: ‘Zionist editing’ on Wikipedia, Haaretz
Wikipedia Editing for Zionists, New York Times
Wikipedia editing courses launched by Zionist groups, The Guardian
Zionist Internet Struggle to Hit Wikipedia, Israel National News,
Wikipedia: A New Battleground in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, The Daily Beast
West Bank Settlers Take To Wikipedia, Haaretz
Aligning text to the right: Is a political organization editing Wikipedia to suit its interests? Haaretz

The effort has been so successful, that every single person in the Wikipedia category of Israeli Murdered Children is someone murdered by a Palestinian. But this isn't the only way that Zionist editors dominate the topic.

Besides creating articles about “Hamas people saying something stupid”, propagandists are also very active in every AfD (Article for Deletion) debate, making sure that articles about killed Palestinians get deleted. So we have Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Rania Siam (T-H-L) (deleted); Rania Iyad Aram (T-H-L) (deleted); Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jihad Shaar (T-H-L) (deleted); and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ghadeer Jaber Mkheemar (T-H-L) (deleted). Killed Palestinian children should remain faceless and nameless, and Wikipedia editors are here just continuing the censorship from elsewhere; see this Guardian article: Israel bans radio advert listing names of children killed in Gaza (and here is a link to the B’Tselem press release.)

The co-founder of Wikipedia claims that ”every Wikipedia editor has a responsibility to try to be neutral”, and that “the community” enforces this. Anyone with a familiarity with the Israel/Palestine area on Wikipedia knows that this is complete rubbish. Over at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement (T-H-L) it is taken for granted that editors are there to promote their POV (point of view), rather than to seek neutrality.

Jimmy Wales has an almost religious conviction that “crowd-sourcing” works, even for contentious subjects. The reality on the ground shows he might just as well believe in magic pixies, spreading their magic pixie dust all over Wikipedia, making it an objective reflection of the world.

The New York Times mentions:

The Yesha Council also announced a prize for the “Best Zionist Editor” — the person who over the next four years incorporates the most “Zionist” changes in the encyclopedia. That lucky encyclopedist will receive a trip in a hot-air balloon over Israel.

This is impressive. Unlike many people who cover these events, I am in full support of what they are doing. Naftali Bennett and the Yesha Council seem to have a clear view of the situation. They recognize that people form their opinions on issues based on the information that they receive. Control the information channels (which include education, news, and entertainment) used by the mainstream, general public (rather than just your internal group), and you control what the public believes. Bennett is willing to accept and embrace that fact. Christian Evangelicals take note: This is how you win a culture war.

I encourage Messianic Jews and Christian Zionists to help out with this effort. Wikipedia is mob-sourced, so if you get a bigger mob on an article, you can take control of that article. Israel is still beleaguered and needs your help to cut through the Palestinian propaganda. I noticed this when I visited England. Anti-Zionist activists were present at many of the tourist areas, engaging people and handing out their literature. Zionists were nowhere to be found. For the sake of Israel, we need to fix this.

I also hope that if you are a Messianic Jew, or even a Christian sympathetic toward Messianic Judaism, that you consider registering for a Wikipedia account, and take the time to learn how to edit. Google is tremendously helpful in this regard. The easiest articles for you to improve are the ones related to key Messianic Jewish figures and organizations. There is a lot of room for more information, and very little resistance. As your ranks build, you can then take on articles such as the article on Messianic Judaism proper, and help give that a more positive slant.

Postscript
I also forgot to mention one of  the key factors to remember: Wikipedia editing is an activity for marathoners, not for sprinters. I can recall three pages off the top of my head (Theodore Beale, Burzynski Clinic, and Rupert Sheldrake) where someone called for their readers to fix a biased Wikipedia page. What happened is that a whole bunch of new editors and editors without Wikipedia accounts rushed in and made changes. The experienced editors called in the administrators and locked the page down in its previous state. Within a couple of weeks, the administrator unlocked the page, at which time the torrent of editors had faded away.

If you want to make a difference, you need to be in it for the long haul. Get an account and build some credibility by editing a variety of pages. Once you get 50 edits or so, on a variety of pages (no matter how trivial the edits), your voice will actually be counted in determining consensus on a page. It generally takes a while to make lasting edits, because controversial edits need to be discussed on the talk page first. Consensus is determined by which position has the majority of people arguing for it. But to get counted, you usually need to have some sort of a track record.

Chizuk Emunah (Pt 2) Under the Microscope: Chapter 45

John 7:5, "For neither did his brethren believe in him." If his own brothers, men of the same flesh and blood, and the nearest judges of the powers attributed to him, felt no inducement to admit his pretensions; surely we Jews may be excused for discrediting what his own contemporaries and brothers rejected as incredible. 

 I have dealt with this objection earlier. The mother and brothers of Jesus did have their doubts about him. As Troki points out, this information is embarrassing to those who preached the name of Jesus, since opponents of the movement undoubtedly used this fact to argue against them. This gives us even more reason to believe that such information was not invented by the followers of Jesus, but is historically accurate.

James, who was Jesus' own brother, did not believe until after the resurrection, until Jesus appeared to him. The church marks James the brother of Jesus as the early bishop of Jerusalem, and his death during a lapse in the Roman government is corroborated by the writings of Josephus. James went to his death proclaiming the supremacy of his own brother as God incarnate. Many of us have brothers. What kind of evidence would it take for you to believe that your own brother is God in the flesh? That is the kind of evidence that James and Paul received.

Evolution Before Darwin

Common knowledge tells us that creationism was the universally accepted belief before Charles Darwin came along and set the record straight. In fact, theories of evolution have been around since the very ancient world, and were part of pantheistic religions like that of ancient India.

Arguments for modern evolutionary theory trade on an equivocation: the fact that species change over time has never been disputed. Children are not identical to their parents. Yet, evolution, as described by people like Kenneth Miller, Richard Dawkins, Michael Ruse, and others is a process where nature brought about the complete diversity of life through the process of change over time. The strength of this hypothesis depends on whether you are open to supernatural explanations for the diversity of life or not. If not (and the theistic evolution movement is not), then modern evolutionary theory follows trivially. If you are open to such explanations, then modern evolution has very little going for it.

The push for acceptance of evolutionary biology is a political one. The acceptance of evolutionary biology, or even the existence of an old earth, is irrelevant to 99% of occupations. You generally don't care whether your auto mechanic believes in a 6,000 year old earth or a 4 billion year old earth. Proponents know that if they can establish modern evolutionary biology, it undermines our confidence in human uniqueness and in doctrines such as the inerrancy of the Bible, and in sex as a divinely designed activity. Acceptance of modern evolutionary biology increases society's acceptance that sex, marriage, and procreation can be separated into separate decisions, a goal of the sexual revolution movement. This is why evolution is so ardently pushed into public schools and to information storehouses such as Wikipedia. Do a search for Susan Gerbic to discover how secularists manipulate Wikipedia to serve their political ends.

Chizuk Emunah (Pt 2) Under the Microscope: Chapter 44

John 6:38, "For I [viz., Jesus], came down from heaven not to do mine own will, but the will of Him that sent me."

If Jesus alludes here to the descent of his soul to the earth, in order to inhabit the body, then he has pronounced a common-place doctrine, for every human body is possessed of a soul; but if he meant that he descended from heaven in flesh, then the assertion is at variance with the other accounts, according to which he was born of a woman in Bethlehem, in a manger. See Luke 2:7. Moreover, we see here an acknowledgment of the all-important fact of his non-identity with the Godhead, as he professed to be only the agent of Him who sent him. 

This is another objection that is hard to understand. John is referring to the idea of Jesus becoming incarnate, just as Paul states in Philippians 2.

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:5-11 ) 

 Ancient Israel spoke about cosmology in terms of a layered system. At the bottom, was the depths of hell. Above it is the world where we live. Above that is the first heaven, also known as the sky or the atmosphere. Above that is the second heaven, or outer space. Above that is the throne of God.

This is what John means by descent. Jesus, who was in the form of God, did not consider his equality with the Father as something to be grasped, or to be held onto at all costs. Instead, he gave up this glorious position by taking on the form of a servant. He came down from the throne of heaven and became incarnate. While in this state Jesus was dependent on the Father in order to know what to do. The Father was in a better position in heaven than Jesus was on earth, given his self-limited knowledge.

This, like many of Troki's objections, requires that one not understand the models of the divine trinity or of the incarnation of Jesus. Once those are understood, many of Troki's objections evaporate.

In fact, Maimonedes gave support to the coherence of trinitarian monotheism when he responded to Hippocrates' claim that we have three souls.

Know that the human soul is one, but that it has many diversified activities. Some of these activities have, indeed, been called souls, which has given rise to the opinion that man has many souls, as was the belief of the physicians, with the result that the most distinguished of them states in the introduction of his book that there are three souls, the physical, the vital, and the psychical. These activities are called faculties and parts, so that the phrase “parts of the soul,” frequently employed by philosophers, is commonly used. By the word “parts”, however, they do not intend to imply that the soul is divided into parts as are bodies, but they merely enumerate the different activities of the soul as being parts of a whole, the union of which makes up the soul. (from Shmoneh Parkim)

 Maimonedes is arguing that the soul has different activities, and through those activities has a complex unity.

Chizuk Emunah (Pt 2) Under the Microscope: Chapter 43

John 2:18-20, "Then answered the Jews, and said unto him [viz., to Jesus], What sign showest thou unto us, seeing that thou doest these things? Jesus answered and said unto them. Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. Then said the Jews, Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in three days?"

Could Jesus prove his divine character by thus advising the Jews to lay a sacrilegious hand on the sacred edifice? And, moreover, it was most unreasonable to ask that the Jews, who did not believe in his divine power, should commit an action that should consign the temple to everlasting destruction, merely for the sake of testing the reality of his character. 

Troki quotes John 2, but does not quote the whole passage. As John narrates

So the Jews said to him, “What sign do you show us for doing these things?” Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jews then said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?” But he was speaking about the temple of his body. When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.
(John 2:18-22) 

John has a habit of rewriting all the dialogue in the style of his own narration, so little in the book of John is a direct quotation of anyone. John is filled with figurative language, telling Nicodemus to be born again, calling himself the door, telling a Samaritan woman that his living water will permanently quench thirst, and telling the crowds to eat his flesh and drink his blood.  People mistook him, and Jesus did not correct them.

The timing of the temple has also been the subject of controversy. Josephus claims that the temple took 8 years to rebuild, or 1.5 years, depending on whether you use book 15 or book 16 of Antiquities as your source. This only refers to the inner cloisters of the temple. Josephus tells us later that the temple was finished in the year 64 under Albinus. According to the Jewish War by Josephus, the renovations began around the year 20 B.C.E. meaning that Jesus gave this statement approximately in the year 26.

David Wood's Testimony

This is one of the most disturbing testimonies that I have ever heard. David Wood is a sociopath, incapable of feeling empathy toward anyone, and using his atheism to justify his behavior. In this story, Wood explains not only how he came to belief in God, but why he came to belief in Jesus as well.