The free online encyclopedia Wikipedia, which is said to be created and edited by volunteers from around the world, published on Thursday false claims that the Palestinian resistance had been involved in acts of "decapitation of 40 babies."

According to the page where the misinformation is published, titled the "Kfar Aza massacre," one member of the IOF reportedly told the Israeli-based broadcaster I24NEWS that "some corpses of the 40 beheaded children had been discovered beheaded."

Furthermore, it states that "Israeli soldiers in the town stated that several civilians had been beheaded." 

"CBS News later interviewed Yossi Landau, regional head of the first responder ZAKA who corroborated that both babies and minors had been beheaded alongside corpses of dismembered adults." 

"The [IOF] stated to Insider that they would not investigate the allegation further, citing that it would be "disrespectful for the dead" to do so." 

The beheaded babies blood libel is now written into Wikipedia’s article on Kfar Aza – listed as the reason the incident is even “notable.”

If it were not for those of us debunking these cynical lies in real time, this Israeli military deception would be universally accepted as… pic.twitter.com/EbWg7P7w09

— Dan Cohen (@dancohen3000) October 12, 2023

Factcheck: 'Israel' has no information on Hamas murdering babies

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The platform has a reputation for being used by the CIA and various intelligence agencies for the purposes of disseminating false information. 

On August 3, Larry Sanger, co-founder of Wikipedia, accused the "US liberal establishment and intelligence community" of using the site for "information warfare."

He told Global Village Space that the platform he helped create has become an instrument of control for what he described as "left-liberal entities", including the CIA, FBI, and other US intelligence agencies.

Sanger highlighted that evidence suggests CIA and FBI computers were used as early as 2008 to edit Wikipedia articles. This activity was first brought to light in 2007 by a programming student named Virgil Griffith, who developed a program called WikiScanner to track edits made from certain locations. 

Read more: Over 19,000 cases of hate speech in Hebrew detected on X platform

Allegations about Hamas beheading babies were debunked shortly after an international condemnation ensued, following the Israeli news broadcaster i24's claim that Palestinian Resistance fighters from the Gaza Strip had killed "40 babies" without concrete proof.

The Grayzone news website has identified David Ben Zion, an Israeli occupation reserve soldier who is the key source behind the false claim, as an extremist settler leader who had previously incited riots by calling for the Palestinian town of Huwara to be "wiped out".

"We walked door to door, we killed a lot of terrorists. They are very bad. They cut heads of children, they cut heads of women," Ben Zion told Israeli i24 reporter Nicole Zedek in an interview on October 10, also referring to Palestinians as "animals".

Oddly, in a video posted on his Facebook account, Ben Zion could be seen smiling in "Kfar Azza", where he claimed to witness the alleged killings of the babies.