NY Times Fires Gaza Journalist Who Called for Murder of Jews

Gaza journalist Fady Hanona contributed to six of the paper’s eight articles on Operation Breaking Dawn.

By HonestReporting

Following HonestReporting’s uncovering of antisemitic Facebook posts by Fady Hanona, the New York Times on Friday cut ties with the Gaza Strip-based stringer.

Out of the eight articles produced by the NYT during the recent escalation with Iran-backed Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), six credited Hanona as having contributed from Gaza City.

Yet Hanona, a freelance producer and fixer who has also been hired by the BBC, The Guardian, and VICE News, appeared to be working to further the anti-Israel narrative promoted by Palestinian terror organizations that seek the destruction of the world’s only Jewish state.

A “fixer” is a local journalist hired by a foreign correspondent or news service to facilitate coverage, usually by acting as a translator or guide and sometimes helping produce content.

During 2014’s Operation Protective Edge against Hamas in Gaza, the freelancer took to social media to threaten the murder of Ghassan Alian, an Israeli Druze who commanded the IDF’s Golani Brigade at the time.

Then, on August 18, 2014 — days before a ceasefire took effect between Israel and Hamas — Hanona urged the Palestinian “resistance” to reject a truce and continue its missile attacks on Tel Aviv, which had at that point already cost the lives of five civilians.

In another online post from the same month, he went as far as invoking Nazi leader Adolf Hitler to support his point about the strength of Gazan fighters. “As Hitler said, give me a Palestinian soldier and a German weapon, and I will make Europe crawl on its fingertips,” Hanona’s post read, citing an unconfirmed quote attributed to the man responsible for the murder of six million Jews.

Furthermore, the NYT fixer shared a now-deleted propaganda video of terrorist groups in Jenin on Facebook, telling his followers that Palestinians should return to “the culture of fighting and killing Israelis.”

“I don’t accept a Jew, Israeli or Zionist, or anyone else who speaks Hebrew. I’m with killing them wherever they are: children, elderly people, and soldiers,” Hanona asserted, adding: “The Jews are sons of the dogs… I am in favor of killing them and burning them like Hitler did. I will be so happy.”

A spokesperson for the New York Times told The Algemeiner on Friday that, “The New York Times had worked with this freelance reporter only in recent weeks. We are no longer doing so.”

To restore public trust in the media, news outlets must uphold their commitment to objectivity. Therefore, HonestReporting calls on the BBC, The Guardian and VICE to follow suit and immediately terminate their relationships with Fady Hanona.