‘He who stands for neutrality supports the oppressor,’ wrote one. Another posted a cartoon of a Yemeni knife being driven into an Israeli ship.
Two Voice of America staff members posted blatantly anti-Israel material on Facebook in the aftermath of the October 7 massacre and continuing through the Houthis’ ongoing campaign against civilian vessels in recent weeks, a review of their profiles by National Review found.
One of the posts appeared to call for the elimination of Israel in 2024. Even those that did not urge the country’s destruction clearly backed Palestinian or Hamas narratives, an ostensible violation of Voice of America’s standards guidance.
Nigel Gibbs, a VOA spokesman, told National Review that the outlet is investigating the matter and that it has no further information to provide. “As we state in our Best Practices Guide, our journalists must be ‘fair, impartial, and neutral at all times on social media and other public spaces,’” he said via email on Tuesday.
While VOA maintains the independence of its editorial stances from U.S. government directives, it receives federal funding and is overseen by the U.S. Agency for Global Media, an executive-branch agency whose leadership is nominated by the president.
Early into the war, VOA faced criticism for its handling of Hamas-related coverage. After the terrorist organization’s October 7 massacre of Israeli civilians, VOA’s leadership directed editorial staffers not to refer to Hamas members as terrorists unless quoting someone else using that word. VOA later reversed that directive after members of Congress demanded that it be changed.
The anti-Israel social-media posts of the VOA staffers, disclosed here for the first time, raise new questions about the culture within the outlet’s newsroom and its handling of the coverage of the war in Gaza. VOA first learned of one of the employees’ posts on January 4, when Ted Lipien, a former director of its Polish-language service, emailed the outlet. After NR contacted VOA and one of the staffers to request comment on Wednesday, both of the staffers in question took many of the anti-Israel posts down. It’s not clear if VOA directed them to do so.
“Even though the violent content was scrubbed after journalists made their inquiries, the fact that for so many days after being told about it, the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) and the Voice of America leadership had allowed a VOA journalist to keep on his personal social media page images calling for violence against Israel and its destruction is a disgrace. President Biden should ask USAGM CEO Amanda Bennett to step down and appoint an executive with media, foreign policy, and government experience who can save this troubled agency from years of scandals and mismanagement,” Lipien told National Review via email.
A USAGM spokesperson referred NR to VOA’s public-relations team. National Review reviewed images posted by Mostafa El Tourky, a graphic designer within the news outlet’s Persian Service, and Diaa Bekheet, a web editor within VOA’s English News center. Neither Tourky nor Bekheet replied to a request for comment from NR.
Two of the images that Tourky posted were anti-Israel cartoons. One January 4 post depicted a knife being plunged into a cargo vessel labeled with the Star of David, presumably a reference to the Yemen-based Houthis’ attacks on commercial shipping vessels headed toward Israel. The other, posted on January 2, showed a “2023” being changed into “2024,” with the “4” filled in with the Hamas Qassam Brigade logo pushing into the ground a “3” filled in with a Star of David. Under the changing number is the word “Goodbye.”
Other images on his page, many of which appear to be artwork rather than photographs, also seemed to protest the Israeli military campaign, a possible violation of VOA’s guidelines. The images include those of a girl holding a Palestinian flag atop a pile of rubble, children near explosions, and a woman formed out of rubble embracing a child. Another of the images appears to show a Hamas fighter with a rifle on his backpack kissing the hands of a toddler wearing a keffiyeh.
One of the images that Tourky posted on his Facebook account. (Screenshot via Facebook)
On October 22, Tourky posted the video of an interview with Scott Ritter, a former U.N. weapons inspector and convicted sex offender who is highly regarded in isolationist and anti-Israel circles for his criticisms of U.S. foreign policy.
Tourky posted a video featuring an interview with anti-Israel commentator Scott Ritter. (Screenshot via Facebook)
Bekheet’s job is to post VOA’s English-language news articles to the Web and pick images for them. In the aftermath of the October 17 Al-Ahli Hospital blast, he posted images from an Al Jazeera broadcast, one with a chyron reading “ISRAEL RAID KILLS 500.” Despite Hamas’s initial claims that Israel had attacked the hospital, later reports indicated that the explosion was caused by a Palestinian terrorist group’s rocket that had misfired and that the death toll was much lower than initially claimed. Despite new evidence contradicting the initial claims by Hamas, Bekheet did not take down his posts about the explosion until this week.
Bekheet posted images featuring claims that Israel was behind the October 17 explosion at Al-Ahli Hospital. (Screenshot via Facebook)
In another post, Bekheet shared an article from the Israeli news outlet Yedioth Ahronot about an Israeli official’s assessment of the Hamas death toll in Gaza. Bekheet wrote that the outlet is “basically the extreme right” and added that “propaganda is the art of planting news.”
Bekheet described the content on Israeli news outlet Yedioth Ahronot as extreme-right “propaganda.” (Screenshot via Facebook)
On November 10, he posted a link to a YouTube video whose description read: “Israeli Historian Illan Pappe tells the truth about the creation of the zionist colony that has been terrorising the ALL native Palestinians (Jews, Muslims & Christians) since the creation of the terrorist, racist, genocidal ideology known today as zionism.”
Bekheet also discussed his views on the war at length in the comments under a post that he made on December 16. He had posted a link to an article from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz examining whether Israel would be isolated on the world stage as Russia was after its invasion of Ukraine.
“I have never in my life seen support for Palestine from the peoples of the world like this time, especially among the youth of American and Western universities — this despite the huge propaganda machines and even laws against them,” he wrote in one of the comments, replying to people who responded to the post.
He also wrote: “Silence is shameful and some silence about injustice is support of injustice. He who stands for neutrality supports the oppressor.”
After NR emailed Tourky requesting comment Wednesday, the images in question disappeared from the account labeled with his name, as did biographical information identifying him as a VOA employee. He also changed his profile picture from the Temple Mount to a solid black background.
The same day, Bekheet deleted many of his posts but kept in place a link to his spot on the VOA website. A note at the top of his Facebook cover picture, of the U.S. Capitol, posted in 2013, reads: “The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer. The information here is provided ‘AS IS’ with no warranties, and confers no rights.”
Tourky and Bekheet both still appeared in VOA’s internal personnel system on Friday.
