Hezbollah’s Exploding Pagers. Plus. . .

It’s Wednesday, September 18. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Coming up: the propagandists who control Wikipedia; why is a transgender-care whistleblower still being prosecuted?; and much more. But first, Eli Lake on Hezbollah’s exploding pagers.  

On Tuesday, hundreds of encrypted pagers used by Hezbollah operatives in Lebanon and Syria exploded at the same time. According to Lebanon’s health minister, the explosions killed at least eight people and injured 2,700. It was like something out of a spy movie, and while Israel has not taken responsibility, who else could be behind this kind of operation? It’s just the kind of innovative, precise strike that Mossad is known for. But how encouraged should Israelis be by this tactical brilliance? Not much, argues Eli Lake in The Free Press. Why? Because time and again, Israel’s tactical wins have not translated into strategic gains. Eli argues that covert action, however impressive, will not win Israel its war against its enemies. Read his full op-ed here. 

And for more on Hezbollah, don’t miss our new video series, “Hezbollah’s Hostages.” Watch the first installment here.

How Wikipedia Became a Propaganda Site 

For a long time, I thought of Wikipedia as a miracle of the internet age: a free, crowd-sourced encyclopedia that I could access any time, anywhere. Was it perfect? No. Would I quote it? No. But it seemed reasonably objective and fair-minded—its hive mind far less biased than so many sources of online information. 

But the Wikipedia dream seems to have soured. What was once a democratic effort—powered by hundreds of thousands of volunteer editors—to describe the world as accurately as possible has curdled into something else. Not a collective attempt to see the world as it is, but a place where busybodies with too much time on their hands force their worldview on the rest of us. 

And signs of the rot are everywhere. 

Take recent changes to Wikipedia’s “Zionism” page. In 2023, it began as follows: “Zionism is a nationalist movement that emerged in the 19th century to espouse support for the establishment of a homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine, a region roughly corresponding to the Land of Israel in Jewish tradition.” But, around 2 p.m. yesterday, the first sentence of the same page was changed to this: “Zionism is an ethno-cultural nationalist movement that emerged in Europe in the late 19th century and aimed for the establishment of a Jewish state through the colonization of land outside Europe.” The idea of Zionism as ethno-nationalist colonization isn’t exactly an impartial read on the situation. In fact, it sounds like something you’d hear at an anti-Israel protest. 

Or take this recent investigation by the Substacker Tracing Woodgrains into one Wikipedia admin called David Gerard. It shows just how much influence the biases and grudges of one man can have over the sources Wikipedia deems reliable and unreliable. Deep in the weeds of Wikipedia, Gerard discredits publications that offend his worldview—designating them “unreliable” so they can’t be used for citations. (The Free Press is one of several publications Gerard objects to.) As Tracing Woodgrains puts it: “Those who master the bureaucracy in behind-the-scenes janitorial battles. . . define the public’s first impressions of whatever they care about.” 

What happened to Wikipedia? That’s the question reporter Ashley Rindsberg set about answering. In a piece originally published by Pirate Wires, and republished by The Free Press today, he looks at the handful of Wikipedia editors reshaping history before our eyes. 

Click to read his full investigation: “How Wikipedia Became a Propaganda Site.” 

Firefighters help a wounded person after Russia hit a high-rise building in Kharkiv with a KAB-250 bomb. (Photo by George Ivanchenko/Anadolu via Getty Images)

• The Federal Reserve is expected to announce a cut in interest rates today after a two-day meeting. The only real question is: How big will Fed Chair Jerome Powell go? Will he stick to the traditional quarter-point adjustment or stretch it to half a percentage point? Either way, the move will mark the end of an economic era, as this will be the first interest rate cut since March 2020. 
  

• The total casualties of the Russia-Ukraine war may have surpassed one million, according to The Wall Street Journal. On the Russian side, Western intelligence estimates Russian casualties could be as high as 200,000 dead and 400,000 wounded. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s estimated casualties are roughly 80,000 dead and 400,000 wounded. The civilian death toll remains unknown.
  

• “World War III is becoming more likely in the near term, and the U.S. is too weak either to prevent it or, should war come, to be confident of victory,” writes Walter Russell Mead, summarizing the recently released report of the Commission on the National Defense Strategy. “A more devastating indictment of a failed generation of national leadership could scarcely be penned,” writes Mead. 
  

• Meta, owner of Instagram, rolled out “teen accounts” on Tuesday that limit the time adolescents spend on the site, restrict what they can see and who can message them, and expand parental monitoring. The updates are designed to make teens safer. But not everyone is convinced. “It’s actually not the parents’ job to make sure that the content for kids is safe. I think it is Instagram’s job,” Arturo Béjar, a former consultant for Meta, told The Washington Post. Today, Congress will consider possible amendments to the Kids Online Safety Act, which passed the Senate in July. 
  

• For those wondering whether all this might be overkill, take a look at new polling commissioned by Jonathan Haidt (not exactly a fan of teenage smartphone use). Haidt polled a group of 18- to 27-year-olds (so not current teens, but digital natives who grew up online). Over 60 percent of respondents said they spend at least four hours a day on social media, while 23 percent said they spend seven or more hours each day on social media. A majority (60 percent) of those surveyed said they thought social media had a negative impact on society, while 52 percent said social media had benefited their own lives.
  

• Schools in Springfield, Ohio, reopened Tuesday with increased security, including state troopers, after they had been forced to close due to bomb threats. Governor Mike DeWine said Monday that those threats had all been hoaxes, and some of them had originated overseas. “Thirty-three threats; thirty-three hoaxes,” he said. “None of these had any validity at all.” For more on this strange story, read The Dispatch’s Kevin D. Williamson on “The Exotic Cat-Eaters of Springfield, Ohio,” or as the subhead puts it, a pretty long story about a thing that didn’t happen.  
  

• China has finally released American pastor David Lin, who is back in the U.S. after nearly 20 years in wrongful detention. The 68-year-old Christian missionary who helped build an underground “house church” was detained in 2006 on charges of fraud and later sentenced to life in prison. The Dui Hua Foundation, a U.S.-based human rights group, estimates that there are at least 200 Americans “under coercive measures” in China. Among them is Mark Swidan, who has been languishing in a Chinese prison since 2012. ICYMI: Read Peter Savodnik’s 2023 report on Mark’s case, “A Prisoner of China. An American Scandal.” 
  

• Neuralink, Elon Musk’s brain-chip start-up, received FDA approval as a “breakthrough device” for its implant aimed at restoring sight to the blind. The experimental device, named Blindsight, “will enable even those who have been blind from birth to see for the first time,” Musk wrote on X. He says the vision will be low resolution at first, but has the potential to be better than natural sight. Plus, it already works on monkeys, so, really, what could go wrong? (The start date for human trials is yet to be announced.) 

Don’t miss out on The Free Press’s upcoming foreign policy debate in New York City. With Bari moderating, Bret Stephens and James Kirchick will go up against Matt Taibbi and Lee Fang over the question: “Should America Police the World?” Tickets are going fast, so get them while you still can. 

(Photo courtesy of Eithan Haim)

Why Is This Transgender-Care Whistleblower Still Being Prosecuted? 

In June, Dr. Eithan Haim—a surgeon who had blown the whistle on how his hospital was secretly facilitating medicalized gender transitions for minors—was indicted on four federal felony counts of HIPAA violations, alleging that he obtained personal information “under false pretenses” and with “intent to cause malicious harm to Texas Children’s Hospital.” If convicted, Haim faces up to ten years’ imprisonment or a $250,000 fine.

At the time, Mark Lytle, Haim’s lawyer, noted the unusual nature of the charges and told The Free Press’s Emily Yoffe that the indictment seemed politically motivated. 

Central to the DOJ’s case was a claim that Haim had no reason to access TCH’s records after finishing his surgical residency there in January 2021. But on Friday, the government shared information with Haim’s attorneys that appears to undermine that argument, according to The Daily Wire. 

TCH records shared with Haim’s defense team show that the doctor entered or was listed on progress notes for both pediatric and adult patients on at least nine occasions between January 20, 2021, and April 14, 2023—right before he blew the whistle. Haim’s lawyers say this disclosure has “blown apart” the government’s “entire premise” that Dr. Haim “was an interloper, falsely claiming responsibility for TCH patients to hide some nefarious and malicious reason for accessing TCH records.” 

On Monday, Haim’s lawyers filed a motion requesting more time to prepare for trial, which is currently scheduled for October 21, arguing that “Dr. Haim has been denied crucial exculpatory evidence necessary for the preparation of his defense.” To us, the question is: Why is this prosecution happening at all? 

When Emily first reported on Haim’s case for The Free Press, she asked him whether he regretted blowing the whistle now that he faced federal prosecutions. Haim, who is expecting his first child with his wife this fall, replied: “If we don’t fight back, what world are we delivering our children into?”

Oliver Wiseman is a writer and editor for The Free Press. Follow him on X @ollywiseman. 

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