Dafna Meir
Dafna MeirScreenshot Channel 2

On Monday morning, at approximately 8 o’clock IDT, the Wikipedia Hebrew-language community finished their vote regarding whether to erase Dafna Meir’s entry from the online encyclopedia.

At the end of the vote, 39 editors voted in favor of erasure, whereas only 29 voted against. Following these results, it is expected that the entry will be erased.

The discussion was initiated because one editor claimed that Wikipedia is not a memorial service, and therefore Dafna Meir does not merit a special entry in the virtual encyclopedia. According to that editor, “It does not make sense that terror victims and fallen soldiers should receive special entries and others [should] not. Since it has been decided that there is no place for memorials on Wikipedia, it is important that this article be erased.”

In the course of the deliberations, a long list of reasons not to erase the article was also raised. Among them was a claim that Wikipedia does indeed have articles on various terror victims and fallen soldiers. For instance, there is a Wikipedia entry for Major Roi Klein, who died after jumping on a grenade to save his soldiers' lives.

One editor, who supported keeping the entry, argued that in her opinion Dafna Meir qualified for an entry both as a victim of a hate crime, and as a person of note. Individuals who became cultural symbols after their death, and had significant community impact during their lives, often receive special articles on Wikipedia. This editor wrote: “I personally think that Dafna Meir's life and activities also qualify her for an entry, but there is no doubt that her death, and the ramifications of the way she died, made Dafna a cultural icon and add to her importance.”

Dafna Meir, 38, a nurse at Soroka Hospital in Beer Sheva and mother of six, was murdered by a 16-year old knife-wielding terrorist in front of her children, at the entrance to her home in Otniel, in January of this year. She fought him fiercely, the terrorist said later, and although fatally wounded, managed to prevent him from entering the house and reaching the three children who were at home before help arrived..