A Middle East reporter for The Washington Post is facing scrutiny for online commentary in which she has called Israel an illegal state, openly identified as an anti-Zionist and signaled support for Hamas and Hezbollah, among other posts now raising questions about the objectivity of her coverage on the region.

In an extensive series of social media remarks mostly published between 2012 and 2014, Heba Farouk Mahfouz, a reporter and researcher in the Post’s Cairo bureau whose recent coverage largely focuses on Israel and Hamas, frequently inveighed against Israel, saying it was “not a point of view” but “a fact” that the country is a “colonial, illegal” state. She also described Zionism as “racism,” while dismissing her critics as “Zio-Nazis” — a pejorative deemed by some watchdog groups as antisemitic.

“If my anti-Zionist views hurt your Zio-Nazi feelings, FUCK OFF & SHUT THE FUCK UP!” she wrote in an aggressively worded post in September 2012. “Better, go live in #Israel & see how they’d treat a brown man.”

“Call me a Nazi, call me a terrorist, call me backward, but still, fuck your illegal ‘state’ of #Israel,” she said in another post published the same day.

Elsewhere, Mahfouz claimed that Israel “despises #African #Jews and any dark skinned Jew,” and compared Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to the Holocaust. “‘Never again,’ said the Zionist settler who is killing Palestinians now in a genocide,” she wrote in November 2012, ending her comment with the words “Holocaust” and “Gaza.”

Mahfouz has otherwise expressed alignment with Hamas and Hezbollah, according to translated posts first written in Arabic. While she voiced disapproval of what she called “Hamas’ social suppression of the Palestinians,” Mahfouz wrote in May 2013 that she was “always and forever with the resistance as long as it is against the Zionist entity,” according to one translation.

“With the resistance always and forever,” Mahfouz said in a separate post published the following year. “And with Hamas and Hezbollah if their weapons are against Israel and not against Arabs like them.”

Mahfouz, now 34, began working at the Post in August 2016, according to her LinkedIn profile. Months before, she had publicly identified as “anti-Zionist” on her Twitter page, according to archived screenshots — a description she removed after joining the paper.

A spokesperson for the Post confirmed to Jewish Insider on Monday that the newspaper is “aware of the alleged social media posts and” is “looking into” the matter. The spokesperson added that the paper would provide additional information “should there be a development to share.”

Several posts were first uncovered last week by Eitan Fischberger, a writer and pro-Israel activist. Mahfouz has since locked her X account — though Fischberger and JI preserved many of her posts via screenshots.

Since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, the Post has sparked backlash for its reporting on Israel and the war in Gaza, which critics have accused of veering into activism and presenting a one-sided picture of the conflict, among other issues. The paper has also dealt with a series of factual errors that have drawn major corrections — contributing to a perception of systemic sloppiness in its Middle East coverage. 

Mahfouz’s newly unearthed social media comments underscore how the paper is continuing to navigate such issues, even as its new CEO and publisher, Will Lewis, has reportedly voiced private concerns about coverage he and others have interpreted as suffering from anti-Israel bias.

The Post, meanwhile, has been shedding several top editors and reporters amid internal discontent with changes implemented by its owner, Jeff Bezos, who has faced accusations of seeking to curry favor with President Donald Trump — after taking a more adversarial approach to his first administration.
Since January, Mahfouz’s byline has appeared on 13 Post stories, all of which have been focused on Israel and Gaza.