'Sunday Times' posts Israel cartoon on Holocaust day
The Sunday Times marked Holocaust Memorial Day in a
less-than-traditional manner, running a virulently anti-Israel cartoon
depicting a big-nosed Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu paving a wall with the
blood and limbs of writhing Palestinians.
The cartoon included a caption beneath the image entitled
"Israeli elections- will cementing peace continue?" Drawn by Gerald
Scarfe, the cartoon appeared in the national paper on Sunday.
“This cartoon would be offensive at any time of the year,
but to publish it on International Holocaust Remembrance Day is sickening and
expresses a deeply troubling mindset,” said European Jewish Congress President
Dr. Moshe Kantor. “This insensitivity demands an immediate apology from both
the cartoonist and the paper’s editors.”
“Amazingly, as this cartoon was published days after the
only democracy in the Middle East, Israel, underwent fully democratic
elections, as others in the Middle East were being butchered by the tens of
thousands, the Sunday Times focuses its imagination solely on the Jewish State.
This contravenes many of the criteria laid out in EUMC’s Working Definition of
Antisemitism and is part of a worrying trend to legitimize the growing assault
on Israel by opinion-shapers.”
The Sunday Times defended its cartoon in response to
charges of anti-Semitism. "This is a typically robust cartoon by Gerald
Scarfe,” a spokesman for the weekly said. “The Sunday Times firmly believes
that it is not anti-Semitic. It is aimed squarely at Mr Netanyahu and his
policies, not at Israel, let alone at Jewish people."
The publication added that the cartoon appeared on Sunday
because that was its first issue since Netanyahu won reelection, and reiterated
that it opposes anti-Semitism in all its forms.
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