Times journalist posts fake Jeffrey Epstein – Isaac Herzog picture

A UK media watchdog has called for The Times to take action against a journalist who posted a doctored picture of paedophile Jeffrey Epstein with Isaac Herzog – with the same reporter having written an article for the paper yesterday discussing the billionaire financier’s supposed connections to Mossad which appears to cite the ‘evidence’ of a notorious Holocaust denier.

The Campaign for Media Standards described what it called “unacceptable” behaviour by Gabrielle Weiniger, a Tel Aviv based journalist covering the Middle East for The Times, who posted the doctored picture of Epstein yesterday on Twitter/X. The photograph included the billionaire’s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, as well as three other people including Herzog, who is now the President of Israel. Accompanying the picture, Weiniger wrote: “Jeffrey Epstein rubbed shoulders with Israel’s top brass – pictured here with president Isaac Herzog. I know there’s more to investigate here. I have been following this closely since 2017. More to come.”

However, it emerged that the picture had been tampered with to add Herzog, who was not present. After receiving many responses pointing out that the photo had been doctored, Ms Weiniger issued a response on Twitter saying: “Just to clarify: the photograph was an AI fake. I can only apologise for the grave error in judgement for reposting the photo, and to the president for any harm this has caused.”

On Monday The Times published an article by Ms Weiniger, titled “Was Epstein a Mossad Agent? New files deepen mystery over Israel links”. The story included the following paragraph: “The files include claims from a confidential informant to the FBI that, far from disliking Israel, Epstein was in fact employed by its spy agency, Mossad. An FBI report from the Los Angeles field office written in October 2020 said the bureau’s source had become “convinced that Epstein was a co-opted Mossad agent”.

Commenting on Times story, Ben Smith, editor-in-chief of the Semafor investigative news outlet, posted information from a Semafor newsletter which directly addressed the Times piece, saying:

“The Epstein files are a trove of unconfirmed claims from questionable sources. One of the particularly incendiary threads comes from a serious-sounding “confidential source” recorded in a formal FBI document claiming that Donald Trump was “compromised by Israel” and that the Chabad Lubavitch network was “seeking to co-opt the Trump presidency…A Times of London article suggesting Epstein worked for Mossad relied heavily on the same material.

“The source offers no evidence, and their name is redacted in the document. But you can find the same case number (the redactions are incredibly sloppy!) in a related document, and it reveals that the source is Charles C Johnson, a  famous troll and occasional Holocaust denier recently found liable in a fraud scheme that involved impersonating an intelligence agent.”

Weiniger was also at the centre of another Israel-related reporting controversy in June 2024, over a piece she jointly authored for The Times titled “Israel said Hamas weaponised rape. Does the evidence add up?” The piece alleged that there was “insufficient evidence that Hamas intentionally and systematically used rape as a weapon of war”. It quoted a number of high profile Israeli women, including Professor Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, (former vice-president of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), D. Sarai Aharoni, head of the Gender Studies Program at Ben Gurion University and Orit Sulitzeanu, chief executive officer of the Association of Rape Crisis Centres in Israel.

However, a joint statement by Halperin-Kaddari, Aharoni and Sulitzeanu was subsequently shared in response to the Times article, saying that the piece “misrepresented our words, twisting them to convey the impression that we support the prejudiced argument that claims of sexual violence are being manipulated by Israel. The article aims to discredit and gaslight the victims of heinous acts of sexual violence. Hence, much of what we said was omitted, and only selective excerpts were used, taken out of context to serve the article’s agenda.

“We are shocked and disappointed by the exploitation of our willingness to be interviewed and the attempt to use our expertise to give credence to the reporters’ views. The article joins those who are guilty of the unacceptable politicisation of sexual violence. In this instance, the reporters’ agenda replaced the professional and ethical commitment to presenting evidence accurately.”

In response to one person yesterday who accused her on social media of having written an article which “denied rapes”, Weiniger responded, saying that her article about Epstein “is quite clear that he was very unlikely to be a Mossad agent”, and that with regard to her 2024 piece, “having spent much of my journalistic career exposing sexual abuse, I would never and have never denied rape.”

On Tuesday, the Campaign for Media Standards criticised The Times, saying:

“Anti-Israel conspiracies, rape denial, and fake imagery. These are not minor mistakes. This is a pattern. It’s time to act… For the paper of record, this is unacceptable. The Times, next time you hire an Israel correspondent, take a bit more care.”

Jewish News has approached both Weiniger and The Times for comment.