Key takeaways:
- David Halbfinger’s reappointment as the New York Times’ Jerusalem bureau chief should raise alarm bells due to his history of biased coverage against Israel.
- His sharing on October 7, 2023, of an agenda-driven post that effectively excused the then ongoing Hamas massacre is symptomatic of his overt bias and reliance on left-wing and anti-Israel NGOs as his sources.
- This reappointment is a continuation of The New York Times’ consistently skewed and negative coverage of Israel, and despite the Gray Lady’s claim, Halbfinger’s return to Jerusalem is highly unlikely to bring any fresh perspective.
As Hamas terrorists rampaged across southern Israel, slaughtering 1,200 people, kidnapping civilians, raping women, and burning families alive — David Halbfinger, now newly appointed as the New York Times’ Jerusalem bureau chief for a second spell, shared a deeply disturbing post on X (formerly Twitter). Rather than condemning the atrocity unfolding in real-time, Halbfinger chose to amplify a message framing the massacre as an expected result of Israel’s policy of “pogroms” against Palestinians.
This agenda-driven post, which speaks volumes about Halbfinger’s lack of journalistic objectivity, is not a surprising misstep. HonestReporting has spent years documenting his coverage, exposing a larger pattern of bias that should disqualify him from returning to the sensitive role of top editor for Israel and the Palestinian Territories.
A Track Record of Slanted Coverage
On October 7, 2023, as Hamas terrorists butchered their way through southern Israel, Halbfinger shared an X thread by Avner Gvaryahu, the director of “Breaking The Silence,” a highly politicized NGO whose critics have repeatedly alleged frequently relies on “either fabricated or exaggerated” testimonies from former soldiers — some of whom received a salary from Breaking the Silence — who are “motivated by financial and political concerns to further a pro-Palestinian agenda.”
Halbfinger wrote it was a “thread worth translating.”
So we did. The thread led with what can only be seen as an excuse for the massacre: “While the fools leading us decided that escorting a weekly pogrom in Huwara is more important than anything, and that running a military operation in Gaza every two months constitutes deterrence, the very foundation of the ‘conflict management’ concept collapsed.”
Thread worth translating. https://t.co/UTnQ1d6QcW
— David Halbfinger (@halbfinger) October 7, 2023
Halbfinger had previously spent over three years reporting from Israel. He knows the people and the places. Yet, on October 7, this is who and what he chose to repost.
Sadly, this is not an outlier.
His last tenure as the paper’s bureau chief in Jerusalem often displayed a persistent and troubling slant. His articles and posts frequently marginalized Israeli perspectives, elevated fringe or extreme criticisms, and omitted essential context.
It’s not only Breaking the Silence that Halbfinger turns to when he wants the opinions of an NGO. In 2018, Birthright, despite being as mainstream and apolitical as could be, came under fire from some who demanded that it tackle Israel’s relationship with the Palestinians in greater detail, leading to the hijacking of some of its trips by left-wing activists bent on publicity. The following year, Halbfinger gave the left-wing J-Street organization all the free publicity it could ask for when he covered their own Israel tour in a feature that read more like a J-Street press release, replete with a mindless acceptance of the organization’s talking points.
Another notable example of Halbfinger’s agenda, from 2020, is his sharing of “an open letter to the Israeli government” against the annexation of the West Bank. The letter lacked any credibility or transparency, but Halbfinger felt entitled to tout it on his X platform, effectively disqualifying himself as a neutral observer expected to cover the region objectively.
Unconvinced Israeli annexation of occupied West Bank land would violate international law? > 100 int’l law scholars write to Netanyahu et al., call it “flagrant violation,” “clearly unlawful,” could lead to “individual int’l criminal liability.”
Read: https://t.co/fixdj5wne6
— David Halbfinger (@halbfinger) June 11, 2020
This is not journalism. It’s advocacy dressed as reporting.
Another example from 2020 is Halbfinger’s co-authored story on the killing of an autistic Palestinian man by Israeli police, a tragic and newsworthy incident. But rather than report the facts and place them in the broader context of terror threats and regional volatility, the piece became a sweeping indictment of Israeli policing — one that HonestReporting exposed as an attempt to revive a months-old incident to drive a political narrative.
Perhaps most alarmingly, Halbfinger and the NYT have occasionally given implicit legitimacy to violence against Israelis. In one piece published five years ago, it is merely stated that an Israeli soldier was “killed by [a] rock” — a passive and sanitized framing that ignores the intent and ideology behind such attacks. This is not the only instance where Halbfinger’s reporting has failed to acknowledge the underlying incitement, glorification of terror, and genocidal ambitions of groups like Hamas.
Pray tell, @NYTimes, how was this soldier “struck in the head by a heavy rock?”
Should readers not be told how it was that the rock was flying through the air? Why the passive voice? pic.twitter.com/JPxiuPUeD9
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) May 12, 2020
Halbfinger has also demonstrated an obstinate refusal to correct himself even when the facts are clearly wrong. In 2018, he falsely described Israel’s Gaza security fence as “electrified,” evoking the possibility of Palestinian children getting zapped just by touching the structure. Despite being called out, Halbfinger flatly refused to fix the error until The New York Times issued a correction anyway, following complaints from HonestReporting.
No it’s not an “electrified” fence, it’s electronic. Nobody will get fried by touching the fence. Please @nytimes @halbfinger correct the error. https://t.co/TSieoAyi3b pic.twitter.com/YjhzNi4jHq
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) April 29, 2018
But then Halbfinger has a habit of disparaging those he disagrees with or dislikes. In a roundup of what the start-up nation’s entrepreneurs and defense industry are doing in areas such as testing, tracking, and telemedicine, Halbfinger led with this appalling sentence:
The Israeli Defense Ministry’s research-and-development arm is best known for pioneering cutting-edge ways to kill people and blow things up, with stealth tanks and sniper drones among its more lethal recent projects.
No Fresh Perspective
The New York Times says, “In returning to Jerusalem, David will offer both a fresh perspective after being away and the experience needed to hit the ground running.” We hope he will offer a fresh perspective from the one that he promoted during his last stint in Israel. But given his October 7 tweet and his overall reporting history, we aren’t going to raise our expectations.
Halbfinger finishes his position as Political Editor at a newspaper that, famously, in the aftermath of President Trump’s first election victory, had to acknowledge its inability to understand the people of America beyond its own liberal audience. With an Israeli election year approaching, will Halbfinger be able to understand the Israeli electorate, particularly in a post-October 7 condition?
We’ve become all too used to biased, anti-Israel reporting from The New York Times. David Halbfinger’s reappointment brings nothing new to the table, only more of the same skewed coverage from one of the world’s most influential media outlets.
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© Divuach Ne’eman R”A, 2025
