You are getting bad information. The Wikipedia pages on those specific topics (Ukraine, Gaza, BLM) is known to be have been manipulated by groups of editors acting in coordination to advance political narratives.
Is there a single source that is not manipulated on these topics? For example in Ukraine, it is very obvious that both western mainstream media and Russian mainstream media are little more than propaganda for their respective camps.
The good thing with Wikipedia (the English version in particular) is that both sides try to manipulate it, in addition to those who really want to say the truth, so in the end, it is relatively neutral. And if you want to go further, there are citations, which is maybe the most important aspect of Wikipedia compared to traditional media, including encyclopedias.
Wikipedia is not perfect, but it does its best to resist manipulation: citations, all activity is recorded and publicly available, etc...
Non-English Wikipedias have more bias, because they are smaller and also because unlike the English version that is used worldwide, even by non-English speakers, the non-English ones are often tied to specific countries. For example, I think I remember seeing the Arabic Wikipedia as being explicitly pro-Palestine, I guess the opposite is true for the Hebrew version.
Both sides try to manipulate it, but in certain topic areas, the numbers are highly skewed such that one side wins almost all disputes.
For example, Wikipedia's definition of Zionism was updated to include "as much land, as many Jews, and as few Palestinian Arabs as possible". There are absolutely no other dictionaries or encyclopedias with definitions resembling that; Wikipedia is uniquely biased there.
When you can't eliminate bias completely, as I think it is the case here, the next best thing is transparency, and you can hardly get better than that! Maybe no other dictionaries or encyclopedias describe it like that, but no other dictionaries or encyclopedias give so much detail on why it is described the way they do.
In the end "Zionism" is just a word, the meaning of it is what people make it to be, not what dictionaries or encyclopedias say it is, and considering the current situation, it means different things if you ask different people, so bias is unavoidable. Of course, if it is etymology you are after, the Wikipedia article covers that too, with plenty of citations.
I think you would have a point if such biased statements had tags such as [1], directing readers to the relevant discussions. Attempts to add such tags are normally reverted by the usual anti-Israeli editors.
So we have theoretical transparency, but no hint to the reader that they may want to look into a dispute rather than accepting the content at face value. Readers could peruse the talk page, but it contains several hundred (mostly archived) discussions.
The main page history also contains thousands of smaller disputes, where communication was done via edit summaries. Realistically, readers aren't going to dig through talk page archives, let alone years of edit history.
Yes, of course there are sources that aren’t actively manipulated by groups of activist editors whose goals are to obscure the truth. Have you tried ChatGPT?
This whole affair should get much more attention. If one topic on Wikipedia can be so manipulated, any topic on Wikipedia can, and it's no longer a reliable source of knowledge.
I hope The Wikimedia Foundation can get its act together, and I admire the courage of Jimmy Wales for speaking up about this, but I've also stopped donating. I want no part of this.
I also have stopped donating. I replied to a WM Foundation email explaining why and they said they don't have editorial control over wikipedia, i.e. their hands are tied. Well OK, but I'm not giving money to fund the promulgation of Jew hatred and blood libel. Sad state of affairs! I've given for years.
Yes, American media is anti-Israel, which is why we've seen daily accusations of genocide, forced starvation, and other absurd allegations for what was a totally normal war, much less destructive than the war in Iraq or Afghanistan or even Vietnam. /non-sarcastic
Another data point is that Jews are getting killed and assaulted around the world. With that said, I agree that for now there's no actual evidence supporting this allegation. But I wouldn't be totally shocked to learn that his ethnicity or zionist beliefs had something to do with this, if indeed he was Jewish (which hasn't been confirmed).
The problem is that most people have many parts of their identities and you don’t know which factored into the attack. It certainly wouldn’t be a shock if it was anti-Semitism but it’s unclear why he would have been singled out from the many thousands of other Jews in the Boston area.
This is problematic because most of the sources saying he was Jewish and pro-Israel seem to be quoting each other. The Wikipedia reference was added yesterday and removed today because the linked sources didn’t say anything about his religion, and I haven’t seen any sources about pro-Israel stances which I’d think would be easier to find if he was outspoken enough to be targeted. It’s still quite possible that he was the unfortunate victim of a stalker-most of the professors I know have had to work with security to keep someone off campus because colleges attract a certain brand of mentally ill people–but it seems odd that these sources are so confident about this assertion without citing sources.
Based on e.g. https://news.mit.edu/2018/nuno-loureiro-faculty-physics-1016 it really seems like his passion was physics and I think we should commemorate someone who tried to improve humanity’s understanding of the universe. If new details emerge, I’m sure they’ll be posted here.
There is no global hate movement against lefties that encourages and relishes in their pain. There is for Jews, who despite accounting for only 2% of the US population are victims of 69% of religious-based hate crimes. Doing the math, Jews are 35x more likely to be the victim of a hate crime. This is not true for lefties.
(This is a general statement responding to your analogy. As I mentioned in my earlier comment, I don't even know if this professor was Jewish or why he was killed.)
No, I don't. I include only FBI statistics of hate crimes targeting religious groups in the United States. Jews are 35x more likely to be victims of hate crimes in the US. Nothing to do with Gaza.
Some people refuse to acknowledge this reality and others attempt to justify it. Many resort to sarcasm as a defense mechanism, revealing their own biases in written records on major public forums.
First of all, that’s not true. Your statistic is probably based on one that indicates Jews account for 69% of religious-based hate crimes, while being 2% of the population. That’s about 35 times more likely if religious-motivated hate crimes were the only type of hate crime. But they’re not, so you’re just misrepresenting the data. The most generous stat you could use would be the one from 2023-2024, which has Jews as 16% of all hate crimes in the US, so an 8x multiplier. But this was a dramatic uptick, which came along with the genocide being committed in their name.
Also, there is a massively asymmetric application of hate crime laws, as you can clearly see by the automatic “hate crime” conclusion you’re already seeing here simply because the victim was Jewish. This asymmetry is glaringly obvious when you look at the handling of these two stabbings.
In one case, the perpetrator stabbed a white woman to death, and said on camera "got the white bitch." In the other case, the subway stabbing happened "blocks from" a synagogue following an argument. Which one do you think gets the hate crime treatment?
This asymmetry makes it impossible to gain much insight from the statistics on this. It’s very likely that 8x is a very high upper bound, and only in an exceptional year where those stats coincided with a genocide committed in their name, which has been a cause for global outrage and disgust.
You’re not “correcting” me. You’re swapping denominators and then accusing me of misrepresentation.
The ~69% figure is not “probably based on” anything. It’s directly from the FBI’s 2023 hate crime data as summarized by DOJ: 2,699 religion-based incidents, 1,832 anti-Jewish. That is 1,832 / 2,699 = 67.9% (call it ~68–69%).
Source: https://www.justice.gov/crs/news/2023-hate-crime-statistics
Now you try to “debunk” that by quietly switching the denominator to all hate crimes. Fine. Do that math too: 1,832 / 11,862 total incidents = 15.4% of all reported hate crime incidents in 2023. For a ~2% population, that’s still about 7–8x disproportionate. So no, it’s not “not true.” You’re just changing the question and hoping nobody notices. You even implicitly concede the underlying statistic (“69% of religion-based hate crimes”) and then pretend it’s false by changing denominators mid-argument.
Your “only if religion-based hate crimes were the only type” line is nonsense. I explicitly restricted the claim to religion-based incidents, and the DOJ/FBI table does the same. You’re arguing with a strawman you invented.
As for “overreported” and “asymmetric” enforcement: that’s vibes plus two cherry-picked links about a specific incident. If you think the FBI/DOJ figures are inflated, show a dataset and a method, not anecdotes and insinuation.
Also, plenty of incidents never get reported at all. I’ve personally been assaulted for being Jewish and didn’t report it. That is what undercount looks like in real life.
Finally, please stop misrepresenting what I wrote. I explicitly said “religion-based hate crimes.” Your comment only makes sense if you pretend I didn’t.
Switched the denominator? So you were specifically talking about religious-based hate crimes? Why were you talking about that very specific subset, and why wouldn’t you mention that or imply it anywhere in your comment? You wouldn’t be… a liar, would you?
Also, nice AI slop - I stopped reading at the first angle quotes.
You’re accusing me of “not mentioning the subset” while quoting a thread where I literally wrote “religious-based hate crimes.” So either you missed it or you’re pretending you missed it. But it's here in this exact thread for anyone to see. Permalink: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46304753
If you want to change the denominator to “all hate crimes,” say so up front. That gives 15.4% of all incidents, still massively disproportionate.
It's common to use angle quotes on HN, but either way, you accusing me of "AI slop" because you don't like the way I quote things doesn't change the arithmetic and is not a rebuttal.
I see it now, you said that in a different comment which wasn’t the one I replied to. My bad for not noticing.
Still, restricting it to “religious-based” hate crimes is transparently misleading. Using a statistic from a narrow category to imply a claim about the whole is a classic substitution error. Either you are lacking in statistical literacy, or you are being intentionally misleading.
And let’s not forget the massive, undeniable asymmetry here that makes the entire point meaningless. None of this is sufficient to assume that a crime against a Jew is automatically a hate crime until proven otherwise.
Thanks for the correction, I appreciate you owning it.
But the rest is just another goalpost move. Quoting a clearly labeled subset is not “transparently misleading,” as you put it It’s how statistics work. I said “religious-based hate crimes” explicitly, because we were discussing hostility toward Jews. The DOJ/FBI table is explicit: 2023 had 2,699 religion-based hate crime incidents; 1,832 were anti‑Jewish.
And I already gave the “whole” denominator too: those same 1,832 incidents are 15.4% of all 11,862 hate crime incidents in 2023. For a 2% population, that is still ~7–8x disproportionate, as I've mentioned. So the “substitution error” accusation doesn’t apply here, because I didn’t imply 69% of all hate crimes. I stated the subset and then did the math for the broader denominator as well.
On the “asymmetry makes it meaningless” claim: I see you're asserting that, but you haven’t demonstrated it. FBI hate crime data is not “crime against a Jew = hate crime until proven otherwise.” It’s incidents agencies specifically classify as bias-motivated based on evidence. The well-known problem in this space is underreporting and incomplete reporting, not some magical inflation that conveniently zeros out anti‑Jewish bias. I can attest to the underreporting having not reported an assault where I was beat up on the NYC subway and told "they should have burned you all" while minding my own business on an NYC subway.
Finally, none of this was me calling any specific crime a hate crime. I explicitly said we don’t know the motive in the professor’s case. This thread started because you challenged a statistical claim. The numbers stand. Given you opened with "liar" and "AI slop," you might want to recalibrate before accusing others of ‘statistical illiteracy'.
Using a religion-specific hate-crime metric to argue about hate crimes in general is not valid inference. It’s a case of category substitution amplified by base-rate neglect, and is misleading even if every quoted number is technically true.
You’re still arguing with a sentence I did not write.
I did not use a “religion-specific metric to argue about hate crimes in general.” I said, explicitly, “69% of religious-based hate crimes.” Then, when you insisted on the “general” denominator, I gave that too: anti‑Jewish incidents are 15.4% of all hate crime incidents in 2023, still ~7–8x disproportionate for a ~2% population. Both numbers come from the same DOJ/FBI table.
https://www.justice.gov/crs/news/2023-hate-crime-statistics
So the “category substitution / base-rate neglect” lecture is just a rhetorical reset button. You keep pretending I implied “69% of all hate crimes” because that’s the only way your critique has a target.
At this point the pattern is clear:
1) miss what I actually wrote,
2) accuse me of lying/AI,
3) admit you missed it,
4) reframe anyway by inventing a broader claim I never made,
5) argue against your invention.
I’m not doing more laps of that. If you want to dispute the DOJ/FBI numbers or show actual evidence of systematic inflation, present a dataset and method. Otherwise we’re done here.
Contrary to the consensus opinion, losing a war one started is not genocide. For any doubts you can use comparables for civilian deaths in various theatres of war throughout history.
He's saying Hamas lost a war, that's all that happened. You're making an unrelated point, which is that genocide is often carried out in the context of war. That may be true, but that doesn't make the hoax that Israel's war against Hamas was a genocide any less false.
Israel's war against Hamas was not a genocide. (Nor was it a distinct war, but merely part of the much longer war against the Palestinian people.)
Israel's war against Hamas was part of a campaign of genocide against the Palestinian people that has been conducted through much of that longer war, a campaign that it started decades before Hamas existed (and fostered the creation of Hamas, during the more intense period of its occupation of Gaza, as a tactic to facilitate through both dividing its opposition and making it less internationally sympathetic, as the primary constraint on the campaign has always been international, and particular US, tolerance.)
Of course it's not and never was a genocide. But jimbo808 wishes it were, because he thinks that will help him justify the very rise in hate crimes against Jews that he also tries to downplay.
jimbo808 wrote: "The most generous stat you could use would be the one from 2023-2024, which has Jews as 16%... which came along with the genocide being committed in their name."
What kind of worldview motivates such a comment? He invents a genocide and says it's being committed in the name of American Jews? This is a novel claim even by the low standards of the antizionist crowd. Laughable.
I, like roughly 90% of the world's jews, am a zionist and I care about civilian casualties. In fact, I don't know a single zionist who doesn't care about civilian casualties. You just made up this racist nonsense, and your comment is totally inappropriate for HN.
What is true is that I'd deny allegations about civilian casualties that I think are false, but that would be because I think they're false, nothing to do with zionism.
Sure you do. Just like MAGA voters who are suffering from the decisions from their vote "didn't vote for this". Except you explicitly did. Zionism necessarily removes land and homes from people to carve out a "safe space" for Jews without any consideration for the generations you're fucking over. Just like you conveniently ignore the decades of "settlers" taking over other people's land. Just like you ignore the destruction of Palestinian wells and hospitals. Just like you ignore the rape of prisoners and the celebration among Zionists for it. It's a nasty belief system that puts Jews above other humans. It is explicitly bigoted and xenophobic and it is proudly announced and broadcast throughout Israeli society.
> A member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party, speaking Monday at a meeting of lawmakers, justified the rape and abuse of Palestinian prisoners, shouting angrily at colleagues questioning the alleged behavior that anything was legitimate to do to "terrorists" in custody.
> Lawmaker Hanoch Milwidsky was asked as he defended the alleged abuse whether it was legitimate, "to insert a stick into a person's rectum?"
> "Yes!" he shouted in reply to his fellow parliamentarian. "If he is a Nukhba [Hamas militant], everything is legitimate to do! Everything!"
That is what you are defending. It's fucking disgusting.
The ICJ has not said Israel's response is a genocide - not in Lebanon, which is what this thread is about, nor in Gaza.
“…the court decided that the Palestinians had a plausible right to be protected from genocide and that South Africa had the right to present that claim… it did not decide — and this is something where I’m correcting what’s often said in the media — it didn’t decide that the claim of genocide was plausible.” - ICJ head President Donoghue
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