Israeli Journalist Faces Backlash Over WhatsApp Comments Targeting Haredim

The controversy around journalist and Shabbat newsletter editor Haggai Huberman, who is identified with Naftali Bennett, intensified after additional messages surfaced from a private WhatsApp group of journalists. The new posts, alongside earlier ones that had already sparked outrage, included suggestions for violence and humiliation against ultra-Orthodox protesters.

Huberman was previously quoted saying the response to road blockades should be “physical violence, break their bones, preferably with batons,” and that people should “run over every religious person, destroy every Haredi.” In the newly revealed messages, he wrote that residents of Alon Shvut should go out, seize the “thugs,” and break their bones. He added, “I would do it with great pleasure.”

He also proposed that residents leave with scissors, “catch a few of those Haredim, and cut off one peyot [sidelock] from each,” clarifying that he meant not both sidelocks, “we are not that anti-Semitic, only one peyot.” In another message, he said he would very much like “more than one peyot” to be cut.

The posts triggered severe criticism on social media, with users and journalists describing them as calls to violence and a crossing of red lines in public discourse. Journalist Arieh Erlikh attacked the silence of media figures in the religious-Zionist sector, asking where their condemnation was. The police are now examining some of the statements in an initial review of suspected incitement.

Huberman has previously drawn controversy, including an allegation by Minister Idit Silman that he used blackmail and threats against her over political issues. After being contacted for comment, he first repeated and escalated his remarks, but a day later told C14 that he had been joking and did not mean the comments to be carried out. He said he was referring only to a specific, localized response to blocked roads and stressed that he opposes violence in any form and rejects blanket generalizations.