Dovid Efune: Telegraph's potential buyer ran fake journalist's story smearing Palestine activist
The media mogul Dovid Efune, who is in exclusive talks to buy the Daily Telegraph and its Sunday title, published a story in 2020 attacking an academic and a pro-Palestine activist by a journalist with a false identity whose profile picture has been accused of being a "deepfake".
British-born Efune, who lives in New York and has a record of making controversial comments about Israel and Muslims, has begun exclusive talks to buy the prestigious British newspapers, according to reports on Monday.
He is the publisher of The New York Sun and is chairman of the American Jewish community paper The Algemeiner, having formerly been its editor-in-chief.
It has emerged that while he was its editor-in-chief, The Algemeiner published an article by a writer claiming to be a student at Birmingham University in England, called Oliver Taylor.
Taylor had bylines in multiple newspapers, including the Jerusalem Post and the Times of Israel.
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But in July 2020, Reuters reported that Oliver Taylor was a fake identity.
He had no substantial online footprint, and Birmingham University had no record of him having studied there.
Several experts in deceptive imagery said Taylor’s profile photo was a “deepfake”, a hyper-realistic forgery.
Efune’s paper, The Algemeiner, had published an article by Taylor in 2020 accusing prominent London-based academic Mazen Masri and his wife of being “known terrorist sympathisers”.
In 2018, representing hacked journalists and activists, Masri had helped launch a lawsuit against surveillance company NSO, the Israel-based developer of spyware technology Pegasus.
His wife is Palestinian campaigner Ryvka Barnard, a senior campaigner at rights group War on Want.
Both Masri and Barnard, who have previously written for Middle East Eye, strongly denied Taylor’s accusation that they were “terrorist sympathisers”, for which he provided no evidence.
It was Masri himself who first suspected Taylor was not who he claimed, and alerted Reuters.
The Algemeiner said Taylor had pitched his story over email and had not asked for payment. According to Reuters, the paper deleted his work after Reuters began asking questions about him.
In response to the incident, Efune told Reuters that the paper had since introduced new safeguards against such incidents.
History of controversial comments
Efune, poised to buy one of Britain’s most well-known and influential newspapers, has a record of making contentious remarks about Israel.
In October 2023 he said on social media platform X: “A baby was found in an oven, baked to death by Hamas terrorists”, citing a first responder’s account.
Later that year, it emerged that the story was false, but Efune had not deleted his post by time of publication,
On 6 May this year, he posted on social media platform X in support of Israel’s Rafah offensive, after the UN warned it “would incur massive loss of life”.
“Israel needs to finish the job in Rafah,” he wrote. “All the innocents of the region will be better for it.”
Then on 5 April, he said: “There is no famine in Gaza. There is no genocide in Gaza. 30,000 + civilians have not been killed. Israel doesn’t target innocent people.”
Over a decade ago, in 2011, he wrote an article for news website Maztav opposing a UN vote for Palestinian statehood, arguing that “Jews should adamantly oppose this UN declaration and all other efforts towards Palestinian Arab independence, recognition and global sympathy”.
'Israel needs to finish the job in Rafah'
- Dovid Efune
Efune has made contentious statements on other issues, too. When the British government banned US radio host Michael Savage from entering the country for fear he would incite hatred, Efune posted that the decision “epitomises intellectual dishonesty and moral cowardice!!”.
Then-Home Secretary Jacqui Smith had banned Savage, citing his comments “about killing 100 million Muslims, and he has spoken in violent terms about homosexuals”.
That same year, Efune posted about the far-right British National Party (BNP), saying: “The BNP is gaining momentum because the mainstream British parties are not doing enough to combat the rise of Islamism in England.”
The exclusivity talks between Efune and the Telegraph Media Group will trigger a six-week process of due diligence to ensure he is suitable to buy the papers, with the deal being scrutinised by media regulator Ofcom.
The Guardian reported last week that there was concern in the Telegraph newsroom about the potential purchase, with one aonymous source saying: “We’re already pro-Israel but people are worried he’s going to turn the Telegraph into his own personal propaganda sheet.”
MEE contacted Efune for comment but did not receive a response by the time of publication.
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