After the New York Times printed a cartoon featuring Netanyahu and Trump that was panned for fanning the flames of Jew-hatred, the paper admitted the image contained ‘anti-Semitic tropes’ and retracted it.
By World Israel News Staff
On Saturday, the New York Times tweeted an acknowledgment that a cartoon it published on April 25 included “anti-Semitic tropes.”
The image in question portrayed Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a dog, with the Jewish star of David symbol dangling from his collar. Netanyahu’s leash is held by U.S. President Donald Trump, who is depicted as a blind man wearing a skullcap, the latter of which is another common Jewish symbol.
The cartoon echoes common anti-Semitic canards and imagery, which present Jews as animals, accuse Jews of hatching plots to dominate the world, and promote the myth that Israel secretly influences world leaders to do the bidding of the Jews.
In response to outcry over the cartoon, the Times admitted on Twitter that the cartoon “included anti-Semitic tropes,” that “the image was offensive,” and that publishing the image “was an error of judgment.”
The cartoon controversy arrives just days after the Times published an article making the bizarre claim that Jesus “was most likely a Palestinian man,” notwithstanding the fact that according to Christian tradition itself Jesus was a Jew living in a territory that Jews called Judea.
The executive director of Boston’s Jewish Community Relations Council, Jeremy Burton, pointed out on Twitter that for Jesus, a “Judean Jew,” “the term Palestine was that of the Roman occupier.” Meanwhile, Daniel Sugarman of London’s Jewish Chronicle referred to the “Jesus was a Palestinian” claim as a “deliberate historical revisionism designed to deny the Jewish connection to the Holy Land.”
The Times later edited the story to eliminate the false claim that Jesus was “Palestinian.”