Last week a group called Writers Against the War on Gaza organized a “statement of solidarity” which accused Israel of genocide. Here’s a sample:

Israel’s war against Gaza is an attempt to conduct genocide against the Palestinian people. This war did not begin on October 7th. However, in the last 19 days, the Israeli military has killed over 6,500 Palestinians, including more than 2,500 children, and wounded over 17,000. Gaza is the world’s largest open-air prison: its 2 million residents—a majority of whom are refugees, descendants of those whose land was stolen in 1948—have been deprived of basic human rights since the blockade in 2006. We share the assertions of human rights groups, scholars, and, above all, everyday Palestinians: Israel is an apartheid state, designed to privilege Jewish citizens at the expense of Palestinians, heedless of the many Jewish people, both in Israel and across the diaspora, who oppose their own conscription in an ethno-nationalist project.

We come together as writers, journalists, academics, artists, and other culture workers to express our solidarity with the people of Palestine. We stand with their anticolonial struggle for freedom and for self-determination, and with their right to resist occupation. We stand firmly by Gaza’s people, victims of a genocidal war the United States government continues to fund and arm with military aid—a crisis compounded by the illegal settlement and dispossession of the West Bank and the subjugation of Palestinians within the state of Israel.

The letter was signed by far left authors, academics and Hollywood-types including Susan Sarandon, Janeane Garofalo, Judith Butler, Lilly Wachowski, Cornel West, etc. There are literally hundreds and hundreds more, certainly well over 1,000.

One of the signatories to the letter was a NY Times’ staff writer named Jazmine Hughes. On Friday the paper announced that Jazmine had agreed to resign after violating the rule against online activism for the second time this year. This is Times’ editor Jake Silverstein explaining the mutual decision taken from an email sent to the staff on Friday.

“While I respect that she has strong convictions, this was a clear violation of The Times’s policy on public protest,” Mr. Silverstein wrote. “This policy, which I fully support, is an important part of our commitment to independence.”

Mr. Silverstein said Ms. Hughes had previously violated the policy by signing another public letter this year. That letter, which was also signed by other contributors to The Times, protested the newspaper’s reporting on transgender issues.

“She and I discussed that her desire to stake out this kind of public position and join in public protests isn’t compatible with being a journalist at The Times, and we both came to the conclusion that she should resign,” Mr. Silverstein wrote in his note on Friday.

An unnamed Times‘ insider told the NY Post it was the right call.

“There’s no question management made the right call here. And in the past, that hasn’t always happened with these cases. But now, hopefully this is a clear message to the newsroom that if you want to advocate for a political cause or attack the work of your colleagues, there’s the door,” one newsroom insider told The Post.

Another NY Times contributor who had signed the letter also announced they were leaving on Friday:

sources were increasingly asking me to answer for what they understood to be shoddy coverage of BLM, trans stuff, israel. though i love my editors and have always felt supported, i ultimately decided the institution was taking more from me than giving to me

— Jamie Lauren Keiles (@jamiekeiles) November 3, 2023

i am a religiously observant jew and trans. i use he/him pronouns. please include this in your coverage.

— Jamie Lauren Keiles (@jamiekeiles) November 3, 2023

I guess some credit is due here. The Times could have overlooked this, as they did the first time Jazmine Hughes signed a letter like this, but they decided not to this time.

On the other hand, the Times’ coverage of the al Ahli hospital blast was pretty awful (as they later acknowledged) and they are still employing a guy who praised Hitler as recently as 2018 to cover the conflict. So on balance, not a great record.