Tuesday, March 11, 2025
Wikipedia disrupted by ‘edit wars’ to manipulate pages on war in Gaza – with at least 14 editors banned
Tensions are brewing at Wikipedia over the war in Gaza as volunteer editors have launched “edit wars” to manipulate the slant of pages, according to a report.
The non-profit encyclopedia has banned at least 14 editors from working on topics related to the Israel-Hamas war as it faces growing accusations of left-leaning bias, according to Bloomberg.
Even the site’s founders are at odds over whether to reveal the identities of the Wikipedia contributors, who are typically kept anonymous.
Wikipedia did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Some volunteer editors have allegedly conspired with other contributors to alter pages on the Middle East conflict to fit their agenda – stoking strong backlash from Jewish organizations.
Some volunteer editors have allegedly conspired with other contributors to alter pages on the Middle East conflict to fit their agenda – stoking strong backlash from Jewish organizations.
“I agree that for many who are doing it, the motive does appear to be the undermining of civic norms and democracy,” he said.
Early last year, Wikipedia’s Arbitration Committee barred three editors from its site for leading a pro-Israel campaign.
Danit Ehrlich's Body Found in Montana after two weeks of searches
The body of Danit Ehrlich, a 33-year-old American-Israeli woman, was recovered on Monday according to CBS News.
Ehrlich's body was found just hours after her family held a memorial for her in Florida. Her family and friends were still gathered when they received the call that her body had been found, according to statements on Facebook.
Ehrlich and her dog Bamba were reported missing two weeks ago on February 21 at a dog park in Missoula, Montana, and authorities have been searching for them ever since.
On Monday, CBS NEWS reported that her body was found by a passerby who spotted her in Clark Fork River in Montana. A preliminary coroner's exam identified the body to be Ehrlich.
Bamba has not been found.
"She was a lovely, lovely girl. She really, she touched people," said Ehrlich's father, Simon Ehrlich.
Ehrlich's boyfriend told CBS Colorado, that "It hurts really bad to know my love, my soulmate isn't here."
"I didn't realize how much I was hanging on to the small sliver of hope I had about her possibly being alive. It brings closure and it brings a sense of finality. It's broken me to know the truth… she was the love of my life, she was the most beautiful woman and caring woman I've ever known. She has an amazing family… She was loved so loudly in death. So many of us will carry Danit and her love of animals and her friends with us. Pictures can only do so much justice to the amazing spirit that she was."
NK Chareidim holding PLO flags, protest outside Nefesh B’Nefesh Aliyah fair taking place in New Jersey
Anti-Israel activists on Monday protested outside the Nefesh B’Nefesh Aliyah fair taking place in New Jersey.
The activists, including Frum Chareidim from the Satmar NK sect,who were holding Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) flags, were chanting “From the River to the Sea, Palestine is almost free” and “Palestine will live forever”.
A group of Jewish people held a counter-protest, waving Israeli and American flags and speaking out against hatred.
“We can no longer remain silent. Things have to be done to change the landscape so that we’re able to come to have a peaceful event and not have to deal with that nonsense that’s going on,” said Jon Mantell, a New Jersey resident and Betar volunteer who took part in the counter-protest.
“Never again is now. Those are the chants that we’re singing. Listen to the vitriol and hatred that they’re saying. It’s simply unbelievable,” he added.
Federal Judge Stops Deportation Of Pro-Hamas Columbia University Ringleader
A federal judge in Manhattan ruled that anti-Israel agitator Mahmoud Khalil is not to be deported “unless and until the Court orders otherwise,” on Monday.
Khalil, who led anti-Israel protests and encampments on Columbia University’s campus, was taken into custody on the Upper West Side in New York City on Saturday. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said that he was a former Columbia graduate student who “led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization.”
The judge ordered a hearing for Wednesday. This after Khalil’s lawyer argued their client had been detained illegally and should be released.
Politicians have also spoken out in defense of Khalil. “Squad” member Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., criticized his arrest, calling the incident an “egregious violation of constitutional rights.”
In a post published to Instagram on Sunday, Tlaib wrote that it was “dangerous to allow our government to target people based on political speech,” and warned that “more targeting of students like this will happen.”
“Everyone should be concerned about this,” Tlaib said in the Instagram video.
The Michigan congresswoman also addressed the reports about Khalil having a student visa revoked after his lawyer said he was a legal permanent resident.
“They were revoking his student visa, well, guess what? He doesn’t have a student visa,” Tlaib claimed. “He’s a green card holder. Legal permanent resident.”
“Now, again, they proceed to engage the attorney… he or she asked for a warrant, they hung up on them,” she continued. “If you believe in constitutional rights, you understand that they’re targeting this person. And everyone knows he has been very vocal against the genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza, and they’re targeting him and refusing him constitutional rights. Who’s next?”
In an X post on Monday, New York State Attorney General Letitia James echoed Tlaib’s concerns.
“I am extremely concerned about the arrest and detention of Mahmoud Khalil, an advocate and legal permanent resident of Palestinian descent,” James’s post read. “My office is monitoring the situation, and we are in contact with his attorney.”
Khalil’s attorney, Amy E. Greer, released a statement claiming that her client was “wrongfully arrested.”
“Last night ICE agents wrongfully arrested Mahmoud Khalil, claiming his student visa was revoked – even though Mahmoud is legal permanent resident (green card) and not in the U.S. on a student visa,” Greer’s Sunday statement read. “Confronted with that fact, the ICE agents detained him anyway.”
President Donald Trump, however, said that Khalil’s apprehension was “the first arrest of many to come” in a recent social media post.
“We know there are more students at Columbia and other Universities across the Country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity, and the Trump Administration will not tolerate it,” Trump said in a Truth Social post.
“Many are not students, they are paid agitators,” he added. “We will find, apprehend, and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country — never to return again.”
Fox News Digital reached out to Tlaib’s office for additional comment.
According to ICE, Khalil is being held at the Lasalle Detention facility in Louisiana.
DIN Encourages Voting "Eretz Hakodesh" In WZO Elections
Reform movements have historically voted in large numbers, directing funding toward initiatives that are detrimental and antagonistic to frum people in Eretz Yisroel.
During the previous WZO elections, Eretz Hakodesh secured relatively significant support, resulting in the redirection of some of the WZO’s funding toward yeshivos, Keren Hashviis, and other institutions aligned with frum values.
Previous endorsements of Rav Chaim Kanievsky zt”l and Rav Gershon Edelstein zt”l, stated that participation in these elections was a mitzvah!
Monday, March 10, 2025
Meet Adam Boehler, Trump’s dangerously naive hostage envoy
Meet Adam Boehler, US President Donald Trump’s envoy for hostages.
Hamas already has, in one or more recent negotiating sessions (Boehler won’t say how many).
And on Sunday, Israelis got to see him at length too, in a veritable flood of television interviews — at least two to American networks, and at least four to Israeli outlets.
There may have been more. It got hard to keep up. It was harder still to make sense of what he was saying.
1. He calls Palestinian security prisoners “hostages”
Boehler, who also worked for Trump in the first administration, sometimes appears to refer to Palestinian security prisoners, who include mass-murdering terrorists, as hostages. “They are exchanging massive amounts of hostages for one person,” he said, for example, in one of his Israeli interviews, with Channel 13.
Trump must reverse Biden’s Iran appeasement and make the mullahs ‘broke again’
“Making Iran Broke Again” has a nice ring to it.
After four years of shady appeasement by the Biden administration, Iran’s bloodthirsty regime is under pressure again — and just in the nick of time, before it finesses its nuclear weapons capability.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent hammered Iran in his speech to the Economic Club of New York last week, foreshadowing harsh new sanctions and a long-overdue crackdown on the Islamist regime’s black-market oil economy.
Iran’s sanctions fraud was a dirty little not-so-secret of the Biden administration, known to intelligence agencies and hedge fund traders alike.
“Iran has developed a complex shadow network of financial facilitators and black-market oil shippers via a ghost fleet to sell oil, petrochemical and other commodities to finance its exports and generate hard currency,” said Bessent.
When Donald Trump left office in 2021, Iran was on its knees.
Savage sanctions aimed at strangling Iran’s nuclear enrichment program and funding of terrorists had reduced Iran’s oil exports to a trickle. Trump had also torn up the diabolical Iran nuclear deal, the Obama administration’s so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
Weak on mullahs
NYC Comptroller the Self-Hating Jew Brad Lander ‘divesting’ pension funds from Israel ..
It’s a tale of two investment strategies.
New York City Comptroller and mayoral candidate Brad Lander is being accused of “divesting” city pension funds from government bonds of the State of Israel — allegedly breaking from his predecessors and state counterpart in a politically charged move.
New York City first invested $30 million in State of Israel Bonds in 1974 under former city Comptroller Harrison Goldin, via the pension funds for educators, the Teachers Retirement pension system.
Over the years, successive city Comptrollers Bill Thompson, John Liu and Scott Stringer have reinvested in State of Israel bonds when bonds matured.
The New York State pension system, run by state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli, also has $363.9 million invested in the Jewish State.
Israel bonds are considered a solid investment, accumulating about 5% returns on average per year, records show.
But Lander’s office said that the pension funds of government employees of New York City — the municipality with the largest Jewish population outside of Israel — is now only $1.17 million.
Only the Police Pension Fund owns a small position of $1.17 million in Israeli Yankee bonds.
Lander’s office claimed that the New York City pension funds do not invest directly in foreign sovereign debt — the bonds of other countries.
But investors in Israeli bonds said Lander is full of it — because prior comptrollers have.
Jeffrey Wiesenfeld, a former CUNY trustee and Israel bond investor, accused Lander of engaging in “passive divestment” by not reinvesting in Israel bonds when ones held expire.
“Lander is divesting from Israel for political reasons. He wants to be allied with his pro-Jihadi, anti-Israel contingent,” Wiesenfeld said.
He also claimed Lander is violating his fiduciary duties because Israel bonds post positive returns for investors.
By comparison, Weisenfeld called DiNapoli a “special mensch” for standing up for Israel amid the war with Hamas in Gaza.
“I and many Republicans admire Tom DiNapoli for his personal fairness and decency, attributes that make him unique in New York politics. He’s a special mensch,” Wiesenfeld said of the Democrat.
DiNapoli, the sole trustee of the state’s pension fund, has invested $363.9 million in State of Israel bonds. This includes $327.1 million of Development Corp. for Israel bonds and $36.8 million of Public State of Israel debt.
Before Lander became comptroller, the city pension funds were invested in Israeli bonds as part of the office’s global fixed portfolio during his predecessor Stringer’s eight years in office from 2014 to 2021, according to a spokesperson for the latter.
Stringer is running against Lander in the Democratic primary for mayor. He declined to comment on the Israel portfolio plummeting under Lander.
The votes of pro-Israel Jewish voters as well as critics of the Jewish state could determine who wins the Democratic primary for mayor.
Lander, through a spokesperson, declined to comment when asked whether he and reps on pension boards he serves on decided not to reinvest in Israel bonds when they matured.
But he stressed that he doesn’t support the BDS movement to divest from Israel.
“Comptroller Lander does not support – and has never supported – boycott, divestment, or sanctions against Israel,” the spokesperson said.
“The New York City pension funds do not invest directly in the bonds of any foreign countries, but they do invest in debt and equity positions in many Israeli-owned companies – just as they do in companies whose owners are Americans, Canadians, Mexicans, Chinese, Saudi Arabians, and many other nationalities.”
Lander first raised eyebrows over his stand on investing in Israeli bonds when he was asked about it during a forum hosted last month by the New York Progressive Action Network.
“We don’t have any Israeli bonds because that’s just, that’s a category of investments that we don’t currently, that we don’t have,” he said at the Feb. 5 mayoral forum, first reported by The Daily News.
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