Al Bureij killings: what Wikipedia removed
On 16 April 2008, Israeli soldiers killed a Reuters cameraman and eight other Palestinians when they fired a tank shell at a group in the Bureij refugee camp. Through 2020 the opening and title called this the “El Boureij massacre.” Today the article and its title use only “killings,” and the word massacre does not appear anywhere in the article. A reader today does not learn that this event was catalogued as a massacre in earlier snapshots of the article.
The word “massacre” appeared 1 times in this article’s opening at its peak, in 2010. Today it appears nowhere in the article at all, references included. Checked against the full current article on 2026-08-01.
The tracked words, snapshot by snapshot
Section titled “The tracked words, snapshot by snapshot”| word | 2010 | 2015 | 2020 | 6 October 2023 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| massacre | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| terror | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| occupation | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
Counts are of the opening paragraph only, the part most readers, search engines and AI training sets ever quote.
What was taken out
Section titled “What was taken out”- The naming of the event as the El Boureij massacre, dropped from the opening.
- An earlier casualty count of ten Palestinians including three children, dropped from the opening; today’s opening gives a different count of nine dead including six children.
- The context that the killings followed a Hamas ambush on IDF forces the previous night, dropped from the opening.
How it opened then, and now
Section titled “How it opened then, and now”2010 (revision 333529129):
The El Boureij massacre occurred on the 16 April 2008. Ten Palestinians , including three children and the Reuters cameraman Fadel Shana’a , were killed during airstrikes on El Boureij refugee camp. A total of eighteen Palestinians, mostly civilians, were killed on this day. The attack occurred after a Hamas ambush on IDF forces the previous night, which resulted in three IDF deaths and four Hamas deaths. ^ lemonde.fr
2025 (revision 1293126240):
Killing of civilians by Israeli army at Bureij On 16 April 2008, Israeli soldiers killed Reuters cameraman Fadel Shana’a along with eight other Palestinians, among them six children, when they fired a tank shell at the group in the Bureij refugee camp in the Gaza Strip . Shana’a’s video footage shows the tank firing and a glimpse of the incoming shell before going black at the moment of impact. Shana’a had been covering an earlier missile strike near Juhor al-Dik in which the Israeli air force had killed nine Palestinians. The previous night, a battle between Hamas and the IDF forces resulted in three IDF deaths, four Hamas deaths and 14 Palestinian civilian deaths, including eight children.…
Related
Section titled “Related”- The drift report: what changed across all 61,944 watched articles
- The case file for this article, with every snapshot and every marked removal
- Who made the cuts: removals grouped by the account that made them
- The live article on Wikipedia
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