NYT Writer Resigns After Reprimand For Open Letter Declaring Israel Committing Genocide in Gaza

Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via AP

Writer Jazmine Hughes has resigned from The New York Times after being reprimanded for signing an open letter that declares Israel is engaged in “genocide against the Palestinian people,” the publication’s magazine editor Jake Silverstein informed staff on Friday.

“While I respect that she has strong convictions, this was a clear violation of The Times’s policy on public protest,” Silverstein wrote. “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.”

NYT media reporter Katie Robertson posted the news in an understated article on the paper’s website Friday, writing:

Jazmine Hughes, an award-winning New York Times Magazine staff writer, resigned from the publication on Friday after she violated the newsroom’s policies by signing a letter that voiced support for Palestinians and protested Israel’s siege in Gaza.

In fact, the letter Hughes signed begins with the sentence “Israel’s war against Gaza is an attempt to conduct genocide against the Palestinian people.” It was put out in late October by Writers Against the War on Gaza and posted on the group’s website, which domain was registered on October 16th of this year, nine days after Hamas terrorists launched a surprise attack targeting Israeli civilians for murder, kidnapping, rape, and torture.

“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 states.

The letter also specifically attacks coverage by Hughes’s now-former employer by name along with other “establishment media outlets,” writing that, “even as we learned that Israel had rained bombs down on densely populated urban neighborhoods and deployed white phosphorus in Gaza City, the New York Times editorial board wrote that ‘what Israel is fighting to defend is a society that values human life and the rule of law.'”

“We condemn those in our industries who continue to enable apartheid and genocide,” the letter adds.

Although the statement opens with the word genocide, and repeats the claim two more times, the word “genocide” does not appear in Robertson’s NYT article about it.

Contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine Jamie Lauren Keiles is also among the statement’s signatories, and has also resigned.

In the NYT article on Hughes’s departure, Robertson noted that Hughes has violated the policy on public protest earlier this year, in signing another open letter that also had other NYT contributors signed on.

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.

Hughes was also involved in the 2020 revolt at NYT over publishing an op-ed from Republican Sen. Tom Cotton., which uproar led to the firing of former editor James Bennett.

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