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When Israel launched its conflict on Gaza on October 7, 2023, following Hamas’s army offensive, Los Angeles-based journalist Jacki Karsh felt she needed to do one thing.
“October 7th happened and everything changed for me because I knew this was going to be a war of information the second it happened,” Karsh mentioned in a December 2024 interview with Los Angeles Mom Magazine. She went on to cite an October 2023 put up on X by Aviva Klompas, the previous head of speechwriting on the Israeli mission to the UN, that mentioned: “The IDF is going to attack our enemies by land, sea, and air. And the rest of us are going to fight on the battlegrounds of academia, law, business, media, and every other damn front we can think of.” Commenting on the put up, Karsh mentioned, “So this is my front. Journalism is my front. And I am doing what I can.”
Karsh, who describes herself as “a six-time Emmy-nominated multimedia journalist,” mentioned among the many many incidents that satisfied her to try to “shift some of the narrative” on Israel was when Al-Ahli Arab hospital in Gaza City was bombed on October 17, 2023. The assault shortly turned a matter of dispute in the U.S. media after the Israeli army denied duty and blamed it on an errant rocket fired by Palestinian militants. “The story was reported incorrectly and then the correction was so muted, it was not like, ‘Wow! We just completely messed up this story,’” Karsh instructed eJewishPhilanthropy this previous August. “They were getting more information from the terrorists who were responsible for Oct. 7.”
In November 2023, Karsh first introduced the thought of beginning a journalism fellowship to the Jewish Federation, a pro-Israel group that claims a part of its mission is to “support a secure State of Israel” and the place Karsh has served as a board member in Los Angeles for a number of years.
Founded together with her husband in 2025, the Jacki and Jeff Karsh Journalism Fellowship describes itself as “the world’s only journalism fellowship solely dedicated to Jewish topics” and payments itself as “resolutely nonpartisan.” The fellowship started accepting functions in July and its inaugural class of fellows will start this system in January 2026. It facilities round three retreats, held in Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and New York, the place as much as ten fellows will interact with “leading journalists, scholars, policymakers, and innovators,” holding classes on subjects together with “Middle East Misinformation” and “How to Cover Antisemitism.”
In response to an inquiry from Drop Site about how the Karsh fellowship will be “resolutely nonpartisan” when the founder claims it was created to assist Israel win an “information war,” the director of the fellowship, Rob Eshmen, responded in an emailed assertion: “The Karsh Journalism Fellowship trains and supports journalists committed to fairness and accuracy on Israel and Jewish issues. Jacki Karsh’s guiding principle is simple: the best response to misinformation and disinformation on these issues is excellent journalism grounded in evidence, integrity, and independence.” He added, “Our mentors and fellows will represent a wide range of political and cultural perspectives, and we encourage open, nuanced dialogue on complex issues.”
The fellowship has attracted 16 students and journalists from a number of mainstream publications to function mentors, together with The Atlantic, Spectrum News, The Spectator, Ynet, Times of Israel, and two journalists at The New York Times: Jodi Rudoren, the previous Jerusalem bureau chief for The New York Times, who now oversees newsletters for the paper, together with The Morning and DealBook; and Sharon Otterman, who covers training, well being, and faith in the New York City space for the Times and who has intently lined the Palestine solidarity campus protests at Columbia and different universities.
The New York Times handbook of “values and practices” for its journalists states they “should take care to ensure” any public engagements—together with giving speeches, collaborating on panels, instructing courses and presenting at conferences—don’t “create an actual or apparent conflict of interest, or undermine public trust in The Times’s independence.”
In response to an inquiry from Drop Site about whether or not having staffed reporters mentoring for a program whose founder has said it exists to assist Israel win an “information war” represented a battle with the Times’ requirements, spokesperson Charlie Stadtlander mentioned in a assertion: “It’s ridiculous to suggest participation as a mentor in this fellowship is anything other than helping to build the reporting skills necessary for the next generation of independent journalists.”
Other fellowship mentors embody NCS’s Van Jones, who not too long ago issued an apology after drawing intense criticism for feedback he made on HBO’s Real Time With Bill Maher on Friday making gentle of photographs of useless Palestinian youngsters and saying they had been a part of an Iran and Qatar disinformation marketing campaign; and Michael Powell, a employees author on the Atlantic and a former nationwide reporter at The New York Times, whose latest articles embody “The Double Standard in the Human-Rights World,” that criticizes teams like Amnesty International and Doctors Without Borders for turning into “stridently critical of Israel.”
As the founding father of the fellowship, Karsh has been an open and die-hard supporter of Israel in each her articles and public feedback.
“The Israel story is on the facts side, so you’re already starting from a good place because the truth is at the end of the day—the IDF is the most moral army in the world,” she mentioned in an interview with StandWithUs Campus in March. “The Israeli population is made up of Christians, Druze and Arabs and Israelis, Jews—it runs the gamut—and so there’s no apartheid there and I think if you just go through each of those things systematically, the facts are on the Israeli side.”
Karsh has described Hamas as “real life monsters” and in contrast Hamas to Nazis. She has additionally questioned the Gaza well being ministry’s casualty numbers, which have been discovered to be correct by the United Nations and even the Israeli military. “When numbers come from a Ministry of Health run by Hamas, whether that’s done deliberately or not, it influences how people perceive the story—and it can even shape policies,” she instructed eJewishPhilanthropy.
Karsh has additionally been extremely important of the Palestine solidarity protests and encampments on college campuses and the media protection of them. In a December 2024 article in Jewish Journal titled, “Editorial Bias: Campus Newspapers Must Stop Marginalizing Jews,” she writes: “Student journalism at some of the most elite universities had already become a breeding ground for rhetoric that marginalizes Jewish voices and vilifies Israel.” Citing Columbia University’s scholar newspaper, she writes: “The Columbia Spectator has demonstrated systemic editorial bias against Jewish students by downplaying concerns about antisemitism and portraying pro-Israel positions as inherently problematic.” The Columbia Spectator obtained the Society of Professional Journalists award for “Best All-Around Student Newspaper” in 2024.
Commenting on the identical matter in an interview, Karsh later mentioned, “nobody is writing government policy based on a Tik Tok video but you read an investigative piece that’s produced by The New York Times, I’m going to bet you that some congressperson is going to quote that and is going to write policy based on it. That’s the problem, [students newspapers are] a feeder to all these mainstream news outlets that they’re carrying that bias with them into these spaces.” She added, “My focus is how Jews are being portrayed in the media, as well as Israel.”
To one of the best of our looking out, Karsh has by no means publicly expressed any concern or sympathy for the tens of hundreds of Palestinian civilians killed by the Israeli army in Gaza, together with over 20,000 youngsters, the displacement of 95% of the inhabitants, the widening famine, the destruction of civilian infrastructure, together with houses, faculties, hospitals, mosques, church buildings, and universities, amongst different acts that human rights teams, main genocide students, and the United Nations have discovered to be a genocide.