Yesha Council, representing the Jewish settler movement, and the rightwing Israel Sheli (My I srael) movement, ran their first workshop this week in Jerusalem, teaching participants how to rewrite and revise some of the most hotly disputed pages of the online reference site.
One Jerusalem-based Wikipedia editor, who doesn't want to be named, said that publicising the initiative might not be such a good idea. "Going public in the past has had a bad effect," she says. "There is a war going on and unfortunately the way to fight it has to be underground."
In 2008, members of the hawkish pro-Israel watchdog Camera who secretly planned to edit Wikipedia were banned from the site by administrators.
Meanwhile, Yesha is building an information taskforce to engage with new media, by posting to sites such as Facebook and YouTube, and claims to have 12,000 active members, with up to 100 more signing up each month. "It turns out there is quite a thirst for this activity," says Bennett. "The Israeli public is frustrated with the way it is portrayed abroad."
More than 250 news outlets around the world have signed an appeal that calls for the...
