No, I’m not kidding. The New York Times re-hired an open admirer of Hitler to cover the Gaza Strip conflict.

NEW: The New York Times has rehired a reporter who has a history of publicly praising Adolf Hitler.

Soliman Hijjy, a Palestinian reporter, has contributed 9 articles for the New York Times since the Israel-Hamas war began.

Back in 2018, Hijjy took to Facebook to voice his… pic.twitter.com/swz2lRN56q

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) October 20, 2023

As I have pointed out before, you can’t believe a single thing reported out of the Palestinian territories because the “journalists” allowed to “report” are only allowed to be there because of their allegiance to the “cause.” There may be an occasional Western reporter who is allowed in to be shown carefully curated “facts,” but the people who bring you the “news” are almost exclusively agents of the terrorists.

“Journalists” such as Sulaiman/Soliman Hijjy, an admirer of Hitler whose social media posts include images and praise of Adolf Hitler, proving that while Godwin’s Law is generally correct, sometimes the comparison to Hitler is accurate. Some people really do support Nazism and need to be called out for it.

A New York Times reporter who came under fire last year for a praising Adolf Hitler in multiple resurfaced Facebook posts was rehired by the Gray Lady to cover the Israel-Palestine war.

Palestinian filmmaker Soliman Hijjy hailed the Nazi leader as recently as 2018 in a post on Facebook, when he shared a photo of himself captioned that he was “in a state of harmony as Hitler was during the Holocaust,” per a translation from Arabic by pro-Israel media watchdog site HonestReporting.

That same year, Hijjy was hired by the Times as a freelance journalist and worked on a slew of “visual investigations” published by the organization through 2021, including one on an Israeli airstrike that killed 44 people.

I thought about this extraordinary story because of a rumination in a newsletter from Bari Weiss, who as you recall resigned from The New York Times after the controversy over the publication of an Op/Ed written by Senator Tom Cotton in 2020. Several Times journalists were forced out or resigned over letting Senator Cotton argue that the National Guard should be called out to quell the George Floyd riots–something, ironically, that was done (eventually) by my Democrat governor.

Cotton’s opinion was considered so heinous that the Times’ newsroom erupted in outrage.

So far there are no reports of outrage in the newsroom about the hiring of an actual Nazi to report from Gaza.

Hejji has had a story almost every day published in the Times since the conflict erupted. A refresher about 2020’s controversy.

When I was at The New York Times, an op-ed by a Republican senator led to a crisis at the paper, and the longest editor’s note that I could remember. At least until the one that was published yesterday about the Gaza hospital bombing (more about that in a moment).

Let’s stick, for a minute, to the brouhaha of June 2020. Perhaps you’ll remember some of the details, like the fact that hundreds of colleagues signed on to a statement saying that Tom Cotton’s op-ed “put the lives of black NYT staffers in danger.” My boss—and the paper’s former Jerusalem bureau chief, James Bennet—was pushed out after being humiliated in front of the paper’s entire staff. His deputy, Jim Dao, was reassigned and ultimately left the paper. Adam Rubenstein, the talented young editor (and loyal friend of The Free Press) who had a hand in working on the offending piece, was scapegoated and resigned. And you know what happened to me.

In 2020 the Times’ reporters were outraged because Tom Cotton’s words “put the lives of black NYT staffers in danger.”

Apparently, an actual Hitler-loving journalist is A-OK, though.

Did the Times not know that Hejji was an admirer of Hitler?

They did know. And even had a nice chat with him about it.

A Times spokesperson defended the outlet’s decision to rehire Hijjy.

“We reviewed problematic social media posts by Mr. Hijjy when they first came to light in 2022 and took a variety of actions to ensure he understood our concerns and could adhere to our standards if he wished to do freelance work for us in the future,” the rep said.

Once Israel denied any involvement, the Times swapped it out with one that said: “Hundreds Dead in Blast at Gaza Hospital, Palestinians Say.”

“Mr. Hijjy followed those steps and has maintained high journalistic standards. He has delivered important and impartial work at great personal risk in Gaza during this conflict.”

Impartial? How could they know? And do they even care? After all, the Times uncritically prints Hamas propaganda and still uses the “Gaza Health Authority” as a reliable source, despite its real name being “Hamas.” The Gaza Health Authority is literally run by Hamas.

The Times has been an effective propaganda agent for Hamas throughout this conflict, and only yesterday capitulated (sort of) and admitted that its coverage of the hospital tragedy in Gaza was…less than accurate. Their Editor’s Note was a masterful non-apology apology.

These are the people who shape our view of the Israel-Hamas conflict, as well as the sorry history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And this is why so many young people have such a distorted view of what is happening in the Middle East. They believe Israel is an apartheid state because Hitler-loving journalists tell them so, and their educators and news outlets repeat these absurdities.

No Jews are allowed to live in Gaza, while Arabs sit in Israel’s parliament. Yet it is Israel that is systemically racist.

Propaganda works. And the New York Times is a key part of the propaganda machine.