The Times of Israel

• 1. Introduction

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  The Times of Israel arrived in February 2012 with a quiet but deliberate mission: to become the English-language newspaper of record for Jewish and Israeli news, published not from print but purely online. Within a decade, it would claim more than nine million unique readers every month and over 35 million monthly pageviews. The questions the documentary will answer are not only how a two-person co-founding vision grew to that scale, but why a Boston-based billionaire investor joined forces with a Jerusalem journalist to build it, what it means for a news outlet to host thousands of bloggers it does not edit, and what happens when a small site suddenly becomes the place the world turns to in a crisis.

• 2. The Founders

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  David Horovitz, an Israeli journalist who had built his career in the English-language press, brought editorial direction to the venture. His partner was Seth Klarman, an American billionaire investor and the founder of the Baupost Group, who also serves as chairman of The David Project. Klarman became the chairman of the website itself. The pairing of a working journalist and a major institutional investor was unusual for a digital newsroom, and it gave the outlet both editorial credibility and financial backing from the start.

  Horovitz drew heavily on talent from the Haaretz English edition when building his team. Several editors who had worked there made the move to the new outlet, including Joshua Davidovich and Raphael Ahren. One of the most prominent recruits was Avi Issacharoff, who had been Haaretz's Arab affairs correspondent and would later co-create the popular Israeli television series Fauda. He joined as the paper's Middle East analyst. Amanda Borschel-Dan, who had been the Magazine Editor of The Jerusalem Post, became Deputy Editor responsible for Jewish world coverage and archaeology, and she also hosts the paper's weekly podcast.

  From the outset, Horovitz was explicit about the outlet's intended posture. Speaking in 2012, he said: "We are independent; we're not attached or affiliated with any political party." Most outside assessments would eventually echo that framing, describing the paper as centrist.

• 3. Languages and Reach

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  The Times of Israel began in English but expanded quickly into other languages, each edition launched at a specific date. On the 4th of February 2014, an Arabic edition edited by Suha Halifa went live. Three weeks later, on the 25th of February 2014, a French edition edited by Stephanie Bitan followed. A Persian edition, edited by Avi Davidi, launched on the 7th of October 2015. The Hebrew site, named Zman Yisrael and edited by Biranit Goren, came last, on the 1st of May 2019.

  Both the Arabic and French editions mix translations of English articles with original reporting in their own languages. Each also carries its own blog platform. When Horovitz announced the Arabic edition, he framed its blog section as something without a clear precedent: a platform drawing "articles from across the spectrum of opinion" and inviting Arabic-language readers to participate within what he called "the parameters of legitimate debate".

  The paper applies one consistent rule across all editions for reader comments: they can only be posted by readers identified through their Facebook profiles or an equivalent verified account. Horovitz cited the goal of avoiding the "anonymous comments that can reduce discussion to toxic lows" as the reason for the policy.

• 4. Growth and Crises

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  Two years after launch, in February 2014, the paper reported a readership of two million. By 2017 that figure had grown to 3.5 million unique monthly users. Growth continued steadily until the paper reached more than nine million unique monthly users by 2021, alongside a blog platform supporting nine thousand active bloggers.

  The sharpest spike came not from organic growth but from world events. In November 2023, following the outbreak of the Gaza war on the 7th of October 2023, the site's web visits increased 604 percent year-on-year to 64.2 million. That surge carried the outlet into the Press Gazette's top-50 global news sites for the first time, landing at 42nd place. By June 2025, website ranking firm Similarweb recorded 45 million visits in a single month, with more than half of that traffic originating in the United States, supported by liaison journalists stationed in New York City.

  Not all the attention was welcome. On the 2nd of November 2017, hackers based in Turkey took down the site for three hours, replacing the homepage with anti-Israel propaganda. Responding to the attack, Horovitz said: "We constantly work to improve security on the site, which is subjected to relentless attacks by hackers." A different kind of breach came in 2020, when Reuters reported that the paper had published op-eds submitted by a person using a falsified identity. The pieces were removed as soon as the problem surfaced. Opinion editor Miriam Herschlag said she regretted the scam because it risked creating "barriers that prevent new voices from being heard".

• 5. The Blog Platform

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  Since 2012, the paper has run a third-party blogging platform open to writers with no affiliation to the newsroom. Articles published there are clearly labeled as outside contributions, and Times of Israel staff do not edit or oversee that content. By 2013, estimates put the number of bloggers at more than 1,500; by 2021, the active count had grown to 9,000.

  The platform has generated controversy on more than one occasion, as inflammatory posts written by outside contributors have sometimes been misread as endorsed editorial work of the paper itself. The site has removed posts that violated its policies. One high-profile removal came in May 2023, when a blogger named Jeffrey Camras published a post stating "Palestine must be obliterated." Genocide scholar Raz Segal cited the post as an example of genocidal rhetoric in Israeli public discourse. The post was taken down. The episode illustrated a recurring tension for the outlet: how to run an open platform that amplifies diverse voices while protecting the paper's credibility when contributors cross lines the editorial staff would never approve.

• 6. Partnerships and Competition

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  Since 2016, the paper has extended its digital infrastructure to Jewish newspapers in other countries through a program it calls "local partners." The first to join, in March 2016, was New York's The Jewish Week. Later additions included Britain's Jewish News, the New Jersey Jewish Standard, The Atlanta Jewish Times, the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle, and, in October 2019, The Australian Jewish News as the seventh partner in the network.

  On the competitive side, the paper contests readership directly with The Jerusalem Post, Arutz Sheva's Israel National News, the Haaretz daily English edition, Israel Hayom, and The Forward. Three podcasts also sit under the Times of Israel umbrella: The Daily Briefing, which publishes every day; Times Will Tell, a long-form weekly review; and Paralyzed Nation, which focuses on the Israeli political system. The paper also produces video content alongside its written journalism, positioning itself as a multimedia outlet rather than a text-only news site. The 2025 press kit listed the audience at eight million unique monthly users, spanning 25 million monthly visits and 75 million monthly pageviews, a figure that places the paper's own count slightly below what Similarweb independently measured for June 2025.