New York Times re-employed “Hitler-praising” Soliman Hijjy to cover Israel-Hamas war

Information reaching Kossyderrickent has it that New York Times re-employed “Hitler-praising” Soliman Hijjy to cover Israel-Hamas 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.

The Times rehired freelance videographer Soliman Hijj as part of its coverage of the Israel-Hamas war. In August 2022, the pro-Israel media watchdog HonestReporting shed light on Hijjy, whose work had been featured by the Times between 2018 and 2021.

HonestReporting found that Hijjy praised Adolf Hitler in a 2012 Facebook post, writing, “How great you are, Hitler” in Arabic. In a 2018 post, Hijjy shared a photo of himself with a caption that translated to either “I’m in tune like Hitler during the holocaust” or “in a state of harmony as Hitler was during the Holocaust.”

In a separate post, he referred to the terrorist group Hamas’ rocket fire toward Israel as “the resistance.”

Hijjy wrote a piece titled, “At a hospital in southern Gaza, a backup generator becomes a critical lifeline,” about a facility two miles from the Ahli Arab hospital bombing by a Palestinian terrorist organization that falsely blamed Israel for the attack.

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

Hijjy’s 2018 post — including a 2012 Facebook post where he wrote, “How great you are, Hitler” in Arabic alongside a photoshopped image of Hitler seemingly taking a selfie — were unearthed last year, when pro-Israel outlets called out the Times for hiring antisemitic journalists as freelancers.