Wikipedia: 'We don’t write entries about soldiers,' removes pages authored by brother of murdered Israeli hostage

Dan Sherman, the brother of killed Israeli hostage IDF Sgt. Ron Sherman, was surprised when he discovered that Wikipedia had deleted the pages he wrote about his late brother. After being contacted by Sherman about the removed content, the Wikipedia editors responded, "We cannot discriminate between one person’s blood and another’s,” and “We don’t write entries about soldiers.”

Ron Sherman served as a liaison soldier in the Israeli military’s COGAT unit when he was kidnapped by Hamas terrorists at the Gaza border on Oct. 7, 2023. He was later killed in captivity in Gaza, and the Israeli military uncovered his body in December 2023. 

Dan Sherman believed that writing a Wikipedia entry about his brother would be a “a meaningful way to commemorate him.” Following the rejection by Wikipedia, Dan took to Facebook to explain his position on the issue of his late brother. 

“I wrote the entire article with zero prior knowledge [of writing Wikipedia pages], hours upon hours of work, for several days, from morning to night. But I was excited, because I knew that Ron would finally have his own page after everything he went through. And rightly so,” Dan said. 

He stressed in his Facebook post that there are already Wikipedia pages about Israeli soldiers who were kidnapped or killed including Tamir Nimrodi who was kidnapped together with his brother Ron. 

Following the first rejection, Wikipedia reportedly initially accepted another page authored by Dan titled “The kidnapping of the three soldiers from the Gaza outpost.” The accepted page includes information about his late brother and his IDF fellow soldiers Nimrodi and Nik Beizer. However, Dan then discovered that the second entry was also suddenly deleted “as if it never existed.”

Wikipedia justified its decision by arguing that “October 7 was a large-scale event, not a private one. Some people won’t get a page written about them, and it wouldn’t be fair to them.”

“Ron Sherman, a soldier who was featured on every news channel around the world, whose photo people held up in rallies across countries, is not being allowed a Wikipedia page, unlike other soldiers and victims of October 7 who did receive one,” Dan noted with bitterness. 

“People need to know his story. He could have been any one of us. Wikipedia’s position contradicts my values – and my country’s values. I refuse to give up on this – for Ron. It hurts,” Dan pledged.

The popular online dictionary Wikipedia has a history of anti-Israel bias. Last month, Wikipedia’s founder Jimmy Wales admitted that the site’s popular “Gaza Genocide” entry would be reviewed as it constituted an example of content that "failed to meet the neutrality standards of Wikipedia."

“This article fails to meet our high standards and needs immediate attention,” Wales said. 

“The neutrality of this article is disputed, and there are very good reasons for that – it inappropriately, and contrary to our policy and traditions, takes sides in an ongoing controversy when it ought to accurately and fairly summarize all relevant views,” Wales continued. “That’s true no matter what," he added.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a Jewish-American watchdog that combats antisemitism, accused in March some 30 Wikipedia editors of cooperating in advancing anti-Israel content on the influential online encyclopedia. 

“Most readers assume Wikipedia is a reliable online encyclopedia, but in reality, it has become a biased platform manipulated by agenda-driven editors on many topics,” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt assessed. 

“Recent Wikipedia efforts toward neutrality are nothing but a Band-Aid on a problem that’s getting worse, with persistent antisemitic and anti-Israel bias still far too present,” he warned.