Did Wikipedia remove the word "militant" from the Cement Incident article?

Yes. "militant" appeared 1 times in this article's opening at its peak. Today the opening has none; the body has 1. We saved the article's opening paragraph at 5 moments between 2015 and 2025, and the counts come from those saved copies.

When did the Cement Incident article stop using the word "militant"?

The word appeared 1 times in the opening at its peak in 2015. It is absent from today's opening, the part search engines quote and AI systems train on, checked against the live article on 2026-08-01.

How can I verify what Wikipedia's Cement Incident article used to say?

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What did Wikipedia remove from the Cement Incident article?

The opening as it read in 2015

Cement Incident took place in the port of Jaffa in Palestine on 16 October 1935. While Arab dockers were unloading a consignment of 537 drums of White-Star cement from the Belgian cargo ship Leopold II , which were destined for a Jewish merchant called J. Katan in Tel Aviv , one drum accidentally broke open spilling out guns and ammunition. Further investigation by British Mandate officials revealed a large cache of smuggled weapons, comprising 25 machine guns ( Lewis guns ), 800 rifles and 400,000 rounds of ammunition contained in 359 of the 537 drums, but because the merchant was not identified and the final destination was not uncovered no arrests were made. It was no secret that the Haganah had been smuggling arms into the country ever since the riots in 1929 and the discovery of the shipment gave credence to the claim that the Jews of Palestine were arming on a large scale. Since 1929 the Haganah had sent representatives to Belgium , France and Italy to purchase weapons which were often smuggled into Palestine in crates and luggage. A sharp sense of danger was thus derived from the perception that the Zionist movement was on the road to attaining the military capacity to establish its state. General alarm in the Arab press over the arms discovery and the failure of the British authorities to take action was followed by a general strike on 26 October, which was widely observed and became violent in Jaffa. At the end of October, in response to the storm of public controversy over the arms shipment, Sheikh Izz ad-Din al-Qassam , a reformist preacher, leader of the Black Hand , an anti-Zionist and anti-British militant organisation, approached his followers with a proposal to take up arms. He recruited and arranged military training for peasants and by 1935 he had enlisted between 200 and 800 men. The cells were equipped with bombs and firearms, which they used to kill Jewish residents in the area, as well as engaging in a campaign of vandalism of settler-planted trees and British-constructed rail-lines. In November 1935, two of Qassam's men engaged in a firefight with a Palestine police patrol hunting fruit thieves and a policeman was killed. Following the incident, British police launched a manhunt and surrounded al-Qassam in a cave near Ya'bad . In the ensuing battle, al-Qassam was killed. Qassam's funeral in Haifa became a major nationalist demonstration attended by thousands and Qassam was subsequently regarded as a nationalist cult hero and became an inspiration to diverse Palestinian nationalist groups, not least during the ensuing Great Revolt of 1936-1939, which his death helped to spark six months later.¹

This is Wikipedia's own text, saved in our repository. Their copy of it is revision 665918007.

The opening as it stood in 2010

Izz ad-Din al-Qassam The Cement Incident took place in the port of Jaffa in Palestine on 16 October 1935. While Arab dockers were unloading a consignment of 537 drums of White-Star cement from the Belgian cargo ship Leopold II , which were destined for a Jewish merchant called J. Katan in Tel Aviv , one drum accidentally broke open spilling out guns and ammunition. Further investigation by British Mandate officials revealed a large cache of smuggled weapons, comprising 25 machine guns ( Lewis Guns ), 800 rifles and 400,000 rounds of ammunition contained in 359 of the 537 drums, but because the merchant was not identified and the final destination was not uncovered no arrests were made. It was no secret that the Haganah had been smuggling arms into the country ever since the riots in 1929 and the discovery of the shipment gave credence to the claim that the Jews of Palestine were arming on a large scale. Since 1929 the Haganah had sent representatives to Belgium , France and Italy to purchase weapons which were often smuggled into Palestine in crates and luggage. A sharp sense of danger was thus derived from the perception that the Zionist movement was on the road to attaining the military capacity to establish its state. General alarm in the Arab press over the arms discovery and the failure of the British authorities to take action was followed by a general strike on 26 October, which was widely observed and became violent in Jaffa. At the end of October, in response to the storm of public controversy over the arms shipment, Sheikh Izz ad-Din al-Qassam , a noted reformist preacher, social worker and leader of the Palestinian resistance to the British occupation and to the Zionist project, approached his followers with a proposal to take up arms. On 20 November, Qassam and his some of his followers were killed in a clash with a British patrol near Ya'bad . Qassam's funeral in Haifa became a major nationalist demonstration attended by thousands and Qassam was subsequently regarded as a nationalist cult hero and became an inspiration to diverse Palestinian nationalist groups, not least during the ensuing Great Revolt of 1936-1939, which his death helped to spark six months later.

Red text was written in or rewritten since the previous snapshot. Their copy is revision 361084083.

The opening as it stood in 2020 11 passages from the previous snapshot no longer appear

The Cement Incident took place in the port of Jaffa in Palestine on 16 October 1935. While Arab dockers were unloading a consignment of 537 drums of White-Star cement from the Belgian cargo ship Leopold II , which were destined for a Jewish merchant called J. Katan in Tel Aviv , one drum accidentally broke open spilling out guns and ammunition. Further investigation by British Mandate officials revealed a large cache of smuggled weapons, comprising 25 machine guns ( Lewis guns ), 800 rifles and 400,000 rounds of ammunition contained in 359 of the 537 drums, but because the merchant was not identified and the final destination was not uncovered no arrests were made. Almost overnight, protests erupted throughout Palestine and swept other major Arab urban cities, including Amman, Cairo, Damascus, and Baghdad. Alongside other groups in Palestine, Al-Qassam carried out incursions against British Mandate forces and Jewish settlers. OCLC 1010668639 . : Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= ( help )

Red text was written in or rewritten since the previous snapshot. Their copy is revision 961502073.

The opening as it stood on October 6, 2023 1 passage from the previous snapshot no longer appear

The Cement Incident took place in the port of Jaffa in Palestine on 16 October 1935. While Arab dockers were unloading a consignment of 537 drums of White-Star cement from the Belgian cargo ship Leopold II , which were destined for a Jewish merchant called J. Katan in Tel Aviv , one drum accidentally broke open spilling out guns and ammunition. Further investigation by British Mandate officials revealed a large cache of smuggled weapons, comprising 25 machine guns ( Lewis guns ), 800 rifles and 400,000 rounds of ammunition contained in 359 of the 537 drums, but because the merchant was not identified and the final destination was not uncovered, no arrests were made. Almost overnight, protests erupted throughout Palestine and swept other major Arab urban cities, including Amman, Cairo, Damascus and Baghdad. Alongside other groups in Palestine, Al-Qassam carried out incursions against British Mandate forces and Jewish settlers.

Red text was written in or rewritten since the previous snapshot. Their copy is revision 1176603103. This is our newest snapshot; the live article may have moved again since.