Does Richard Engel Support Israel?

Zach Mandel Feb 25, 2025 Updated Jul 28, 2026 5 min read

Short answer: As of July 2026, Richard Engel is not a public advocate for or against Israel. He is a career war correspondent, NBC News chief foreign correspondent since 2008, who has reported from inside Israel repeatedly and under fire, including in the aftermath of the October 2023 Hamas attack and during the June 2025 Iran-Israel missile war, but he has never made a public statement of support or opposition, made a donation, joined a boycott, or appeared at a pro- or anti-Israel event. On the religion question people search for: Engel has said in his own memoir that his father is Jewish and his mother, who is Swedish, is not, making him of partial Jewish descent, though he does not present publicly as a religiously observant Jew or as an Israel advocate.

What Richard Engel has actually said and done

2006: Engel reported from Lebanon during the Israel-Hezbollah war, filing dispatches from the conflict zone as part of his Middle East beat, according to Wikipedia's summary of his career.
2008: In his memoir War Journal: My Five Years in Iraq, published by Simon & Schuster, Engel recounts being asked if he is Jewish and answers in his own words: "Half, I said. My father is Jewish, my mother is not." His mother is Swedish. This is the primary, direct answer to the "Richard Engel religion" question, from Engel's own memoir (a scanned copy is viewable via the Internet Archive).
2012: Engel covered the 2012 Israel-Gaza conflict as part of NBC's Middle East reporting, per Wikipedia.
July 16-18, 2014: After NBC correspondent Ayman Mohyeldin witnessed and reported an Israeli strike that killed four Palestinian boys on a Gaza beach, NBC executives pulled Mohyeldin from Gaza and instead had Engel, who had just arrived in Tel Aviv, voice the story on Nightly News. Critics, including Glenn Greenwald writing for The Intercept, accused NBC of institutional pro-Israel bias, and NBC reversed the decision two days later and sent Mohyeldin back to Gaza (a sequence also documented on Wikipedia's Ayman Mohyeldin page). This was NBC's editorial call, not Engel's personal decision, but it remains the one episode that put Engel's name into an Israel-bias controversy.
October 9, 2023: Two days after the Hamas October 7 attack, Engel reported live from inside Israel while mortar fire landed nearby, telling viewers it was "practically right on top of us," per an NBC News report carried via Google News.
June 17-20, 2025: During the Israel-Iran conflict, Engel reported from the site of an Iranian missile strike inside Israel and, days later, took cover from incoming missiles at an Israeli gas station while filing for NBC, according to NBC News coverage indexed on Google News.
Mid-March 2026: Snopes debunked an AI-generated rumor claiming Engel had been injured while reporting in Israel, confirming he was unharmed and still actively reporting from the region; Engel posted a video from Israel around March 12 showing himself alive and well, per Snopes' fact-check, with the timeline of Engel's Middle East career also corroborated on Wikipedia.

Jewish identity and the correspondent's job

Richard Engel is a Stanford graduate fluent in Arabic who built his career as a freelance reporter based in Cairo and Baghdad before joining ABC News and then NBC, where he has served as chief foreign correspondent since 2008. He has covered nearly every major Middle East conflict of the last two and a half decades: the Iraq War, the Arab Spring, the Syrian civil war, the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war, the 2012 and later Israel-Gaza conflicts, the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack and its aftermath, and the June 2025 Israel-Iran war.

On the religion question, Engel has answered it directly, in his own words, in his 2008 memoir: his father is Jewish, his mother, who is Swedish, is not. That makes him of partial Jewish descent by birth, but there is no public record of him practicing Judaism, discussing a personal faith identity, visiting Israel outside of assignment, donating to Israeli or Jewish causes, or appearing at any Israel-related advocacy event.

On whether he "supports" Israel, there is no on-record instance of Engel personally endorsing, criticizing, boycotting, or campaigning for or against the country. His body of work is combat and conflict journalism from many sides of many wars, including extensive time reporting from inside Israel under fire in both 2023 and 2025. That reporting record is not, by itself, evidence of political sympathy either way; embedded, on-the-ground coverage from a country during wartime is standard practice for a network's chief foreign correspondent on a story of that scale. The one episode that put his name into an actual bias argument was not his own doing: in 2014, NBC's decision to sideline a Gaza-based colleague and instead air Engel's report from Tel Aviv drew accusations of institutional pro-Israel bias against the network, a decision NBC reversed within two days. That is a data point about an NBC editorial call, not a statement of Engel's own politics.

The bottom line

Richard Engel is a veteran war correspondent of partial Jewish descent (Jewish father, non-Jewish Swedish mother) who has repeatedly reported from inside Israel, including under missile and mortar fire in 2023 and 2025, but there is no public record of him personally supporting, opposing, donating to, or boycotting Israel. He is best characterized as a professional journalist covering Israel as a conflict zone, not as an Israel advocate or critic, with the caveat that a 2014 NBC editorial decision, not his own, briefly drew accusations of pro-Israel bias against the network because of how his reporting was used.

Support Israel directly

Whatever any one correspondent's politics turn out to be, plenty of people want a plain, unambiguous way to show where they stand. Shop Israel's I Stand With Israel collection includes pieces like the I Stand With Israel T-Shirt, a simple, wearable statement of solidarity that does not require reading between the lines of anyone's news coverage.

Last updated July 2026. We update these profiles as the record changes.