Amit Segal Mocked Online for Bizarre Smear Campaign

The issue of Israel's interceptor stockpile is making headlines again. Yesterday, a report that made waves around the world was published, originating from a scoop by the American news site Semafor, which was later widely quoted by the Reuters news agency. According to the report, U.S. officials warn that Israel's interceptor stockpile against ballistic missiles is running critically low. This is not a new or baseless claim - similar reports that caused a stir have been published in the past, including an investigation by the Wall Street Journal in June 2025 and other reports throughout the months of the war. On one hand, there is no reason to panic immediately, especially when Israeli officials were quick to categorically deny these reports, and amid reports that a massive U.S. emergency budget was approved for urgent defense needs. On the other hand, this is a weighty and familiar strategic issue that cannot simply be dismissed with a wave of the hand and disdain.

However, Amit Segal, the senior political commentator for Channel 12 News, chose exactly this path, rushing to dismiss the report. While this could have been written off as an embarrassing lack of familiarity with the American media landscape, many online saw it as a familiar modus operandi: what is perceived as an attempt to engineer the consciousness of his readers. The growing sentiment was that this wasn't an innocent typo, but an attempt to frame a legitimate report (even if uncomfortable for Israel) as fake news from a hostile entity - only this time, unlike in the local bubble, someone across the ocean caught him red-handed.

On his social media channels, Segal explained that the report "was taken from the anti-Western and anti-Israeli news agency SamaaFour - just for context." Shortly after, he tweeted an identical message in English on his X (Twitter) account, spelling the site's name as "SamaaFour".

For those unfamiliar, the Semafor website is lightyears away from being an "anti-Western news agency" or an Islamic propaganda outlet. It is a respected American media organization founded in 2022 by two giants of the mainstream U.S. media: Ben Smith, former editor of BuzzFeed News and a New York Times columnist, and Justin Smith, former CEO of Bloomberg Media Group. The site is considered centrist, capitalist, and highly influential in Washington.

In the interest of fairness, it should be noted that Semafor has previously faced criticism and suspicions regarding its ties to entities connected to China, but in the same breath, it must be remembered that the site is openly funded and sponsored by American corporate giants like Mastercard and Chevron. Either way, even if there is legitimate criticism of the site's business or editorial model, it in no way contradicts Segal's blunder, who invented a fictional Islamic media entity and completely missed the nature of the organization he was criticizing.

Segal's mistake did not escape the eyes of the site's founder and editor, Ben Smith himself, who responded to Segal with a jab: "I'm sorry -- what are you talking about??", and then added another tweet: "Not to question your expertise on SamaaFour". Although Segal rushed to delete the tweet after more than 100,000 people were exposed to it (in addition to the more than 100,000 who saw it on Segal's Telegram), the internet did not forgive. The comment thread turned into a festival of mockery: users joked about the "Arabic news channel SamaaPhor owned by Sheikh Bin Samid", and laughed that Segal thought the site was based in Sanaa.

A significant portion of the international commenters addressed his credibility and tied him to Prime Minister Netanyahu: "He will say anything as long as it fits with Bibi's fascist agenda," tweeted one user. Another user stated: "He's not a journalist. He's a propogandist. Anything you post that might color his sponsors in bad colors, he'll claim you're anti west and anti israel." Another commenter summed it up with the sarcasm that inspired our headline: "Bibi's propagandist really phoning it in here".

To be fair: all journalists make mistakes sometimes; it's part of the profession and the dynamics of working under time pressure. But it seems Amit Segal's case has become an anomaly. While in the Channel 12 studio he has editors who can control some of the mistakes, as well as panel members who can contradict him - on social media he is his own editor - and the results show. Twitter user On Azriel has been tracking Segal's mistakes for several months, returning with dozens of significant pieces of evidence for what he calls: "fake, wrong predictions, just nonsense or consciousness engineering."

But if until now Segal's mistakes mainly embarrassed him in front of the local Israeli audience, this time the mistake is already appearing in front of English speakers and senior journalists around the world. The fact that Segal is presented abroad as Israel's top commentator, and that such a blunder occurs in English in front of Washington colleagues, not only damages his personal credibility in the eyes of many - but could also give the entire Israeli media a bad name.