Dovid Efune Why frontrunner to buy Telegraph is causing alarm

A little over a decade ago Dovid Efune was juggling the editorship of the New York-based Jewish publication the Algemeiner Journal while also handling publicity for Israel's first world boxing champion.

- Mark Sweney, Jane Croft

Now Efune, who is the owner of the New York Sun, is the leading contender to buy Britain's Daily and Sunday Telegraph, but his fighting talk about the situation in the Middle East has sparked alarm among staff about the possible editorial influence their potential new owner could bring.

As the conflict intensified this week, with Iran launching missiles into Israel, the British-born Efune - who has described himself in the past as a "conspicuous Jew" - upped his typically strident views on social media. In a series of posts on X he said Israel would "decapitate" Iran's leadership with "targeted strikes and close quarter assassinations... I'd expect the Ayatollah himself would be in the cross-hairs".

Last year, Efune gave a speech in New York in which he told the audience that when it came to the Israel-Hamas conflict there was a need to "fight with every report and headline".

Telegraph staff had railed against the potential editorial ramifications of being taken over by a consortium led by the GB News co-owner Paul Marshall, which did not submit a second-round bid for the titles, and now they are alarmed by the political bent of the new frontrunner.

"We are out of the frying pan into the fire," said one newsroom insider at the Telegraph. "His tweets over the last few days are not the behaviour you want to see from a newspaper proprietor. It compromises everybody by association."