Harvard group posts ‘despicable’ antisemitic cartoon, apologizes

“Is there no limit?” Rabbi David Wolpe, who recently resigned from Harvard’s antisemitism advisory committee, wrote on X.

By World Israel News Staff

A group of pro-Palestinian Harvard faculty members published an antisemitic cartoon to their official Instagram page, then claimed that the link to Jew-hatred was “inadvertent” and replaced the post with an image of a Black Panther who encouraged the murder of Zionists.

Made up of some 65 unidentified members, the newly formed Harvard Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine group posted a “1960s-era cartoon of a hand emblazoned with a Star of David and a dollar sign holding Muhammad Ali and Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser in a noose,” according to a JTA report.

The image immediately sparked backlash from the university, which is currently the subject of a federal investigation into rampant antisemitism on campus.

Harvard’s president, Claudine Gay, recently resigned after she failed to condemn calls for the genocide of Jews on campus as hate speech during a congressional hearing.

“Such despicable messages have no place in the Harvard community,” Harvard said of the cartoon in a media statement. “We condemn these posts in the strongest possible terms.”

Harvard Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine quickly backtracked, claiming that they “apologize for the hurt that these images have caused and do not condone them in any way. Harvard FSJP stands against all forms of hate and bigotry, including antisemitism.”

However, the group then replaced the post with an image of Black Panther Stokely Carmichael, who said “the only good Zionist is a dead Zionist.”

“The cartoon is despicably, inarguably antisemitic. Is there no limit?” Rabbi David Wolpe, who recently resigned from Harvard’s antisemitism advisory committee, wrote on X.

“No debate about this being antisemitic,” wrote Jeffrey Flier, who once served as the dean of Harvard Medical School.

Another pro-Palestinian group on campus that shared the original antisemitic image also apologized.

“We shared an image that was not reflective of our values as organizations,” they wrote on Instagram.

“Our mutual goals for liberation will always include the Jewish community — and we regret inadvertently including an image that played upon antisemitic tropes.”