Telegraph and Politico owner says journalists must support Israel or resign | Hacker News Reader

Telegraph and Politico owner says journalists must support Israel or resign

middleeasteye.net

35 pointsrobtherobber18 comments

the rhetorical arrogance is comical;

"“I think you have to qualify or prove arguments or points if they are new or if they are debatable - but for me at least, these two facts - that the Iranians are working on the nuclear bomb and that they are aggressors for decades - are so obvious, so proven for many times, they are almost - it’s like saying America is the biggest democracy in the world.”

"“I don’t have to prove that,” he added.

"India is widely considered as the largest democracy in the world with 1.4 billion people, while Iran has always denied working on a nuclear weapon."

Not the largest, and not the most democratic either. [0]

"I don’t have to prove that"

Maybe he meant he can't prove that (because it's false)?

[0] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/democracy-index-eiu

Indeed. Except not in the way you attempt to point out.

Middleeasteye.net is owned by Jamal Awn Jamal Bessasso, a Palestinian (self-defined, by which I mostly mean he could choose otherwise) who has Dutch citizenship and made a few million pounds working as a director of planning and HR at Al Jazeera and worked for the Hamas-affiliated Al-Quds TV, and is still Qatar-affiliated.

And if you read his sites (either this one or the other one) ... his publications are A LOT less neutral than Telegraph or Politico.

This is like Vladimir Putin pointing out the Washington Post is not neutral (in fact Putin has done so). He might even be correct, HOWEVER by virtue of the messenger the message is incredibly, overwhelmingly suspect.

How is there neutrality in a group of racist europeans thinking they have the right because of who they claim an ancient ancestor was to move continents to rob and pillage and put people in camps to create a new state in their place for only them?

Trying to claim this is a both sides or issue where pro robbery and anti robbery are equivalent stances you can be neutral on is silly.

No. I claim that to be neutral you cannot have a stake in the whole situation, nor a strong opinion.

He sounds like a subject matter expert to me. Zionists do nothing but lie, so it's important to elevate these truthful voices.

Israel to pour $730m into propaganda arm amid reputational crisis - https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-pour-730m-propagan...

"Reputational" crisis. Not the depravity of genocide and colonialism.

Also a good read - The West’s bubble of illusion about Israel - and about itself – is finally being burst - https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/west-bubble-illusion-i... - The genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing in Lebanon exhausted the West’s moral legitimacy. Now Iran is slowly exhausting the West’s military primacy.

The headline seems pretty dishonest. It seems like what he actually said was along the lines of "if someone isn't aligned with our values, they might decide that working here isn't a good fit."

There's no transcript though, mostly paraphrasing from an outlet whose almost sole focus is smearing Israel, so it's hard to know what was actually said.

Here you go: https://therealnews.com/politico-demands-allegiance-to-israe...

TRNN is another outlet with an explicit anti-Zionist stance, and they seem to be just summarizing this Jewish Insider article [1] while adding some anti-Israel spin.

Considering the extra details in the Jewish Insider article, what he said was basically "if someone rejects the Jewish peoples' right to self-determination and rejects Israel's existence, then we have a fundamental difference in values, and they might decide that working here isn't a good fit".

That's pretty far from the MEE's dishonest summary of "support Israel or resign", or TRNN's dishonest summary of "demands allegiance to Israel". One can criticize a government without rejecting the country's very existence. Israelis themselves do it all the time.

[1] https://jewishinsider.com/2026/04/politicos-owner-axel-sprin...

Yes, that is a better article. It spells out Döpfner's position a lot better than the others. The important bit of information is that this is all in response to Politico journalists issuing a joint letter saying that Döpfner using the platform to further his own political agenda will weaken their reputation as an impartial news source.

Instead, he pushed back hard.

So basically: Get on board or get out.

Except a country that is founded on bringing in a new group of people from other places to destroy another and replace them shouldn't exist, especially when it has to keep the people that were already there in whats essentially camps without rights.

Anyone supporting the "existence" of that is a clown.

> along the lines of "if someone isn't aligned with our values, they might decide that working here isn't a good fit."

constructive dismissal

How is people from europe moving to destroy one society and replace it a value? Is home invasion a value too?

Smearing Israel is not needed, they do that to themself.

Murdering, raping and torturing thousands of babies, children, women, man and journalists.

If Israel "smears itself" by being super evil, then why do we constantly see its critics resorting to disinformation? Shouldn't there be plenty to criticize while sticking to the facts?

But you don't. You see one group that justifies people moving from europe to rob pillage rape and kill the natives to make a new state for themselves, and the people that were already there just defending themselves from this.

Why is it that when someone points out anti-Israel disinformation, the topic suddenly changes to some other anti-Israel talking point? If Israel and its supporters are super evil, shouldn’t its critics be able to pick a point (such as the headline claim here) and defend it as truthful, rather than repeatedly shifting as we see here?

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