Late last year, a major New York hospital system removed two doctors from their jobs for their social media postings about Israel and Hamas.

One doctor, a prominent cancer researcher in his 60s, was outspoken in defense of Israel and had posted a variety of anti-Hamas political cartoons, including some with offensive caricatures of Arab people. The other, a young doctor-trainee at the start of his career, was accused of posting a message on Instagram that defended the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel.

The actions of the hospital against the two doctors — each one supporting an opposite side of the conflict — drew the hospital system, NYU Langone Health, into the national debate over the legality and propriety of firing people for their online postings. Dozens of people across the country have been fired for online posts about the Israel-Hamas war.

In the three months since the doctors were removed from their jobs, however, their fates have diverged.

The cancer researcher, Dr. Benjamin Neel, is now embroiled in an increasingly bitter lawsuit with N.Y.U. and NYU Langone, rife with allegations of retaliation, hypocrisy and academic misconduct. He is still a tenured professor at N.Y.U.’s medical school, where he earns a salary of $585,000. But following his online posts, he was fired from his job as the director of N.Y.U.’s cancer center, which came with an additional salary of $1,037,700, according to the Nov. 10 termination letter.

The younger doctor, Dr. Zaki Masoud, appears to have returned to work at the same hospital on Long Island as before, according to Dr. Neel’s legal papers. An online petition to reinstate him had received nearly 100,000 signatures as of Thursday.