/// BY ELIANA JONSHON AGO 25 2026 -------------------- https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!GVCO!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd662c0e7-7cf5-4018-88c2-73b2c582cf27_736x468.jpeg Karen Attiah An arbitrator ordered the Washington Post to reinstate the radical anti-Israel columnist Karen Attiah after the outlet fired her over social media posts made in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination. The decision centered on whether the Post had “good and sufficient cause” to fire Attiah, and it “illuminates how labor agreements can limit the ability of newspaper owners to manage their publications,” our Ira Stoll writes. “It also offers an unusually detailed and not particularly flattering window into the internal operations of the Post.” The text of the arbitrator’s decision, for example, “discloses how Attiah’s defense lawyers used Post management language to push back against the Post’s attempt to fire Attiah.” It quotes Attiah’s 2021 Annual Performance Appraisal self-assessment, in which Attiah touts her “sizable following on Twitter (246,000) and on Instagram (22,600)” and her use of the accounts to “promote pieces” and “generate discussion amongst younger and more diverse audiences.” Attiah also cited “studies” showing “that Black users in particular are more likely to create share [sic] political content on social media like Facebook and Instagram.” It’s unclear what “studies” Attiah was referring to, but the argument was echoed by Attiah’s managers, who responded in their section of the review, “We agree with Karen’s self-evaluation here. She is a forceful presence on social media, offering her followers an appealing mix of sharp, timely commentary on vital issues and relatable glimpses into her personal life (her cat Artemis is something of a social media star).” The arbitration decision also quotes a January 2025 email to Attiah from former Post publisher Will Lewis, who was supposed to be implementing Jeff Bezos’s vision for the newspaper, with the subject line “Well done.” “I wanted to drop you a note to thank you for sharing your exchange with Meta’s Black AI character,” Lewis wrote. Whether the ruling means Attiah, a fierce critic of America and Israel, will return to the Post as a columnist is unclear. “The arbitration decision discloses that the Post ‘planned to reassign’ Attiah ‘from Opinion Columnist to Letters Editor.’ While her pay and benefits would have remained unchanged under that plan, her own voice would have been limited from its previous reach as a columnist whose work reached Post readers under headlines such as ‘I Gained 20 Pounds of Muscle. Here’s What I Learned,’ and ‘What the assault on DEI Will Really Mean: Resegregation,’ and ‘Black women are the face of America’s ugly Gaza policy.’” READ MORE: Black Users More Likely To Share Social Media Content, Fired Washington Post Columnist Wrote in Performance Self-Evaluation []{} Additional reading: Abdul El-Sayed has a Hasan Piker problem, and it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. The anti-American streamer and El-Sayed surrogate took aim at Jewish Democrat Jeremy Moss over his support for Israel, arguing that Moss, who has declined to endorse El-Sayed while running for a House seat in the Detroit suburbs, arguing that if politicians like Moss continue to support Israel, “eventually someone is going to come around and take action, not against the state of Israel, mind you, but against American Jews.” Democratic congresswoman Hillary Scholten condemned him as “a hack who thrives on hate, shock and awe” and said others in her party “should all be calling out this disgusting rhetoric so it loses its grip on our politics once and for all.” El-Sayed did not take Scholten’s advice. Instead, he released a statement saying he “stand[s] against any rhetoric that puts the community at risk” but did not describe the rhetoric he was referring to. He also said that “nobody speaks for this campaign besides me and my campaign spokespeople” and lamented those who “try to make this race about a Twitch streamer.” How might that have happened? Piker is not the only pro-Hamas activist with close ties to El-Sayed. The Council on American-Islamic Relations’s super PAC, the Unity & Justice Fund, boasted in a fundraising email over the weekend that it helped “mobilize tens of thousands of Muslim and Middle Eastern voters to turn out” for El-Sayed. CAIR’s leader, Nihad Awad, who said he was “happy to see” Hamas attack Israel on Oct. 7, touted the fund’s creation in 2024. Simon & Schuster is barreling forward with its U.K. release of Jason Arday’s memoir Great and Unfortunate Things, which it announced will be published as planned on Thursday. It comes as Simon & Schuster faces criticism for selectively editing the book while publicly standing behind Arday as the former Cambridge professor’s long history of false biographical claims was exposed. Don’t expect the publisher to say more about those false claims: It released a statement from Arday’s family calling for “space” and said it will not be commenting further. New York magazine addressed its “use of the term genocide to describe Israel’s actions in Gaza” in its roundly criticized “Habibi City” issue. “This past fall, after an extensive review of genocide scholarship and interviews with multiple experts in the field of genocide studies, the magazine’s editors decided the term was an accurate description of the atrocities in Gaza, that accusations of antisemitic intent were in fact obfuscating an overwhelming ­scholarly consensus, and that its use would be allowed in our pages,” the magazine wrote. It’s unclear whether those genocide “experts” included the renowned International Association of Genocide members Mo Cookie and Sheev Palpatine. Check out our full Tuesday lineup below. Abdul El-Sayed Doubles as Consultant for Health Nonprofit Led by ‘Scam Artist’ Accused of ‘Exploiting Medicare’ ‘Open Your Door, We Are Death’: Palestinian Authority Schools Glorify Oct 7 in Disturbing New Footage as West Bank Government Angles for Power in Gaza Black Users More Likely To Share Social Media Content, Fired Washington Post Columnist Wrote in Performance Self-Evaluation Super PAC Linked to Hamas-Friendly CAIR Takes Credit for Helping Elect Abdul El-Sayed and ‘Building a Movement’ in US Mosques Disgruntled Karen Wins Management Dispute Thanks for reading the Washington Free Beacon! Subscribe for free to receive new posts.