2022
Annual Report
Jacki Alexander
Chief Executive Officer
Letter from Chief Executive Officer
For more than 20 years, HonestReporting has been at the forefront of media monitoring and exposing anti-Israel media bias.
Though the false accusations against Israel are nothing new, the tactics used to defame the world’s only Jewish state are evolving. The lies are becoming more blatant. Truths, even partial truths, are no longer a prerequisite. It is not only the West Bank that is “occupied.” Now, every city “from the river to the sea” is referred to as “occupied.”
Any Jew present in the Old City of Jerusalem is referred to as a “settler storming the Al-Aqsa mosque.”
These absurd accusations, which can be easily refuted, end up spreading like wildfire across social media. And, today’s absurd accusations can easily become tomorrow’s status quo narratives.
HonestReporting has also seen a huge demand for easily accessible information to push back against the most nefarious claims made against Israel. And we are working to meet those needs.
In addition to responding to anti-Israel incidents in real time, we are producing a multitude of content to respond to the age-old accusations that continue to rear their ugly heads. From editorial commentary and fact sheets to videos and infographics, HonestReporting is providing the answers.
We are evolving to meet people where they are, to ensure that we are at the forefront of media monitoring and exposing anti-Israel media bias for 20 more years to come or as long as our vital work is required.
Jacki Alexander
Chief Executive Officer
Gil Hoffman
Executive Director
Letter from Executive Director
HonestReporting became a force to be reckoned with in the fight to restore Israel’s deterrence on the media battlefield in 2022.
I had the honor and privilege of joining HonestReporting as executive director in July, bringing with me my 25 years of experience in journalism. Jacki Alexander joined two months later as CEO, bringing with her from AIPAC her experience, skills and success. Simon Plosker rejoined us as editorial director, bringing with him his institutional memory as our longest-serving employee.
Together, we have led HonestReporting to a much more public presence in mainstream and social media. We have also started monitoring posts about Israel on social media, where young people get their news nowadays, in addition to our critiques of mainstream media, which remain our bread and butter.
We significantly increased our presence on Twitter and Instagram, joined Tiktok, and started working directly with influencers on social media. To make our presence felt further, I lectured across five US states with strong Jewish communities on the East Coast. In 2023, I will be speaking to communities and on campuses in all American time zones and in London.
Top publications around the world wrote about the five blatantly antisemitic journalists who were fired due to our team’s investigative reporting. This led to journalists being more careful about what they write on social media and erasing past posts about Israel and the Jewish people.
Because of our team’s successes, The Algemeiner website named me one of the top 100 people positively influencing Jewish life in 2022.
Our success also drew the attention of Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah, whose affiliated media outlets reported extensively about HonestReporting. Iran’s English propaganda channel Press TV even featured HonestReporting in a half-hour show in which they stalked our staff’s social media accounts and cynically included pictures of our children in an effort to intimidate us.
There is no greater indicator of success than being targeted by our greatest enemies. They are alarmed by HonestReporting because we have successfully and consistently challenged their incorrect narrative about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
We will continue to ensure proper reporting about Israel in 2023, as the formation of a new Israeli government presents new challenges. The bad press Israel is currently receiving makes the media monitoring of HonestReporting more important than ever.
So stay tuned to HonestReporting.com and tell your friends to receive our emails, follow us on social media and support us at this critical time for the Jewish state.
Gil Hoffman
Executive Director
New Management Team, New Era
Jacki Alexander
Gil Hoffman
Simon Plosker
2022 saw the appointment of a new management team to take HonestReporting into a new era, as Jacki Alexander joined the organization as its new Global CEO. Based in Florida, Alexander arrived after 15 years at AIPAC, where she served most recently as the Southern States Regional Director of Operations.
She joins Gil Hoffman, HonestReporting’s new Israel-based Executive Director and Executive Editor and former chief political correspondent for the Jerusalem Post, to leverage their combined 40+ years of experience in Israel advocacy and news reporting to expand the organization’s reach and impact. In a significant recognition of our work on behalf of Israel and the Jewish people, The Algemeiner named Hoffman as one of the “Top 100 People Positively Influencing Jewish Life” in 2022.
The end of the year also saw the return of Simon Plosker as Editorial Director following two years at UN Watch. Prior to his departure in 2020, Plosker spent more than 14 years at HonestReporting and brings a wealth of experience and institutional memory back to the organization.
New Staff
Helena Garson
Chaim Lax
Speaking Events and Public Appearances
HonestReporting staff have presented to groups and organizations around the world.
- Gil Hoffman briefed diplomats from a variety of countries including groups arranged by Moody’s credit agency, and the Australian and Singaporean embassies in Israel.
- Gil Hoffman gave 30 lectures and meetings over two weeks in October in five US states: New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Maryland, and Florida. This included successful fundraising meetings in New York, Maryland and Florida as well as two scholars in residence in Lawrence and Rockland County, both in New York.
- Gil Hoffman, Gidon Ben-Zvi, Rachel O’Donoghue and Akiva Van Koningsveld presented to organizations, events, and student groups, including:
Social Media
2022 was a transformative year for HonestReporting on social media.
Adults – and primarily younger adults – are increasingly getting their news on social media. Yet, it is precisely on these open platforms where the worst lies about Israel circulate.
That’s why HonestReporting has upgraded its social media presence significantly and the decision was made that we would monitor posts about Israel on social media, in addition to our coverage of mainstream media that we have been monitoring successfully for over two decades.
In addition to publishing our original editorial content pieces to a wider audience, HonestReporting began addressing the proliferation of false narratives across four social media platforms.
- When we exposed the journalists and photojournalists at mainstream media outlets as antisemites, it was our activists and followers on social media who amplified that message, ultimately leading to their dismissals.
- When falsely edited videos began circulating on social media that claimed to show Israeli police executing Palestinians in cold blood, we debunked those claims and showed the original, unedited video.
- When nefarious accusations made it seem as though Israeli visa laws were draconian, we separated the fact from the fiction.
We produced a video almost every single day addressing these malicious lies aimed at Israel, and more. We had 78 posts go viral, many reaching hundreds of thousands of people.
In the digital age, HonestReporting is adjusting our tactics in order to meet people where they are. We are fighting the misinformation about Israel in a place where the right audience can be given the tools to address lies when they see them.
In an effort to boost our social media presence, over the past few months, we organized events for social media influencers, informing them about HonestReporting and engaging them. Gil Hoffman took a group of influencers around the headquarters of four political parties on the night of Israel’s elections and helped them put the race and its results into perspective.
Our digital media specialist, Raquela Karamson, initiated a regular live update about what is happening behind the scenes at HonestReporting along with question and answer sessions for our followers to interact with the editorial team.
Though 2022 was a breakout year for our social media efforts (we increased our overall reach by 534%), 2023 is looking to be even stronger. Our content has already reached more people in the month of January than in all of 2022.
If you’re not following us on one of our platforms, please look for us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and now TikTok!
- Digital Media Warriors
In 2022 we focused on the digital innovation portion of our digital media strategy, by engaging and building relationships with key influencers in the Israel advocacy space.
To this end, we held two successful influencers events: our L’Chaim to Digital Media Warriors on September 8, and our Rosh Hashanah meet-up. Both of these events were well attended by influencers with followings ranging from 70K–400K.
See our recap reel here.
- Election Night Influencer Crawl
On November 1, 2022, Israelis headed to the polls to vote for the 25th Knesset. To celebrate living in a free and open democracy, we took a group of 18 influencers in the Israel advocacy space behind the scenes on election night to witness our young democracy in action!
More party than political, our ‘party bus’ made the rounds from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem to four official celebrations of the leading political factions, starting at Labor and ending at Likud.
Along the way, we shared key facts on the voting habits of Israel’s minority groups, including the Israeli Arab, Druze, Ethiopian and Christian communities. See more here.
The influencers also received expert, insightful commentary on voting and Israel’s political landscape from HonestReporting’s resident expert Gil Hoffman.
Over the course of that night, HonestReporting’s democracy crawl and related content were shared by 17 influencers, we were tagged 34 times and gained more than 200 followers within the next 48 hours! The online reach for this group of influencers ranges from 32K followers to 120K followers!
Watch the recap from our night here.
Notable Successes
After HonestReporting launched a campaign to help expose business entities linked to Hamas, a British lawmaker took action. In a written question submitted to Parliament, Labour peer Lord Foulkes of Cumnock requested that the Home Secretary comment specifically on our revelations about the UK-designated Palestinian terror group’s financial dealings.
Following revelations by HonestReporting, YouTube took action after BBC contributor Abdel Bari Atwan had praised a terror attack in Tel Aviv on his personal YouTube channel. In a now-removed video initially published on April 8, the British-Palestinian journalist called the terrorist who killed three Israelis a “hero.”
This was far from the first time that the social media giant had been criticized for its failure to act adequately against anti-Jewish hate posted on its platform.
HonestReporting’s research exposed a key “civilian” eyewitness in the formal complaint against Israel filed by Al Jazeera at the International Criminal Court (ICC) over the death of Shireen Abu Akleh to be a terrorist affiliated with the Islamic Jihad terror organization.
Jenin resident Sleem Awwad’s social media profiles revealed that he is a staunch supporter of Islamic Jihad, having posed with the flag of the jihadist terror group. HR’s editorial team found at least five photos of Awwad brandishing firearms, including military-style rifles with scopes.
- Pro-Hitler, Pro-Terror Journalists Exposed
In 2022, HonestReporting’s investigative work exposed several journalists covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as being virulent and unapologetic antisemites. As a result of our reporting, several mainstream media outlets decided to cut ties with them.
Addressing the Crucial Issues
The news cycle never stops and neither does HonestReporting. As news breaks, we’re there to cover the big stories and ensure the media coverage is accurate.
Here are just a few of the issues we’ve covered in 2022:
FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022
Shireen Abu Akleh
Jerusalem Bus Stop Terror Bombings
Antisemitism in the Black Community
Ben and Jerry’s
Operation Breaking Dawn
Palestinian Wave of Terror
2022 Elections
Education
HonestReporting continues to create content on our website to include topics that people look for when they want answers about Israel and the Middle East.
Here is just a small selection of the in-depth posts that have been written and published during 2022:
HonestReporting in the Media
HonestReporting has increasingly become the source of expertise that top media outlets turn to for interviews and analysis.
Here are just a few of the media outlets where we were interviewed in 2022:
CNN
BBC Arabic
Daystar
i24News
BBC World Service Radio
ILTV
The Algemeiner
Israeli Radio
Israel Channel 13
South Africa Chai FM Radio
Al Jazeera
- Citations
HonestReporting and its staff were cited multiple times in media outlets including:
Fox News
Newsweek
Washington Examiner
Daily Mail (UK)
Daily Beast
Washington Monthly
The Times of Israel
Jerusalem Post
Israel Hayom
Ynet News
JNS
Ha’aretz
Jewish Journal
Jewish Chronicle
Iranian State TV Targets HonestReporting Staff
Following HonestReporting’s success in highlighting antisemitic social media posts of journalists who praised Adolf Hitler and lauded Palestinian terrorist attacks that killed dozens of Jews, the organization came under attack from the Iranian state-sponsored propaganda channel Press TV.
The Iranian regime targeted HonestReporting, devoting its ‘Palestine Declassified‘ program to the question “Honest Reporting or Dishonest Intimidation?”
The show accused the staff of HonestReporting of working for the Israeli government and the Israel Defense Forces, singling out staff members who served their compulsory military service. The decision by The New York Times to no longer work with journalists following their antisemitic posts was falsely attributed to a vast conspiracy.
Host Chris Williamson said the show would reveal “the way in which the Zionist regime marshals its forces internationally to remove critics from their jobs.”
Reporter Latifa Abouchakra concluded her report: “It’s clear that Hosam Salem, a Palestinian photographer from Gaza, was fired from his job at The New York Times by the Israeli military.”
HonestReporting’s work also caught the attention of radical anti-Israel media, including MintPress News and Mondoweiss, which published their own attacks both in print and cartoons.
HonestReporting Research Study
Comparing US media coverage of hate crimes against minorities, including Jews
Jews are victims of more hate crimes per capita than all other groups in the United States, as tracked by the FBI. However, anti-Jewish hate crimes receive disproportionately little news coverage by a disturbingly large margin.
Our research was carried out using professional media intelligence tracking software and the FBI Hate Crime Statistics database.
We found that out of all of America’s minority communities, Jews have been the target of the most hate crimes per capita during the period 2018-2020 yet warranted the least amount of news coverage in relation to the number of incidents. More media coverage typically results in a lower number of hate crimes as the public exposure compels local authorities to act, both on a criminal and educative level. Our study has exposed the irresponsibility of the media in failing to adequately cover antisemitic hate crimes.
HonestReporting’s former CEO Daniel Pomerantz appeared on CBS News to discuss the findings, which were also featured on Fox News, Newsweek, Jerusalem Post and The Times of Israel.
The Dishonest Reporter Awards Return
2022 saw the welcome return of HonestReporting’s Dishonest Reporter Awards – our annual recognition of the most biased coverage of the Middle East conflict and beyond.
While there were many contenders, including New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman and ABC The View’s Whoopi Goldberg, the prize was bestowed upon MSNBC News and its team of overpaid talking heads whose anti-Israel agenda is so blatant they wear it as a badge of honor.
Any attempt at journalistic impartiality has long ago been abandoned by the likes of Mehdi Hasan, Ayman Mohyeldin and Peter Beinart, whose obsessive hatred of the Jewish state colors their view on basically everything else.
In addition to the inevitable social media buzz, Gil Hoffman was interviewed about the award on ILTV.
Interns
HonestReporting takes interns from a variety of Jewish Agency MASA-affiliated programs.
Reaching the younger generation is important to us and our interns don’t spend their time serving us coffee. HonestReporting interns become part of the team and make valuable contributions. Some of the results can be seen on our website as the interns demonstrated their abilities by producing quality articles on different Israel and Middle East topics. So it’s thank you to:
Benjamin Amram
In one word, my experience at HonestReporting was influential because I learned how the media distorts the reality of Israel, how a growth stage organization operates, and how to accurately report on stories from in the field experience. I was grateful to experience every aspect of the organization from working with social media data to writing published articles. Lastly, the individuals at HonestReporting are thoughtful, kind, hard-working, and motivated to change the misperceptions on Israel caused by media biases. Every day at HonestReporting was a pleasure to speak with and learn from the people who are creating a positive change for Israel.
Ruby Frank
Interning at HonestReporting for the past five months has not only been thoroughly enjoyable but has given me a deep insight into the extensive work that goes into defending Israel’s image in the media every day. It was extremely rewarding to be a part of this important mission, equipping me with the necessary skills to continue doing my part in Israel’s fight on the media battlefield. I would like to thank the HonestReporting team for giving me their time, effort, and mentorship in helping me grow.
Aaron Silverstein
What HonestReporting is seeking to achieve is exactly what pro-Israel advocates need in 2022: the tools, platform and know-how to fight antisemites on social media where so many people are impressionable in regards to Israel.
Sammy Schajer
During my time at HonestReporting I worked in the digital media department alongside doing ad hoc tasks for other departments like the editorial team. It was a great opportunity for me to grow my understanding of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Israeli political system and lots of other things. It also gave me the chance to develop research and analysis skills in a supportive environment. My internship coincided with the Israeli elections which meant that there was no shortage of interesting work!
Lydia Buckius
Interning for HonestReporting was such a rewarding and immersive experience. I truly felt like I was part of the HR team and making a positive impact through the assignments I worked on to break down biases, educate against antisemitism, and showcase Israel. I learned so much while working with Raquela, and I look forward to returning to Jerusalem.
