Guardian ‘fires’ veteran cartoonist over Netanyahu sketch

The Guardian is parting ways with cartoonist Steve Bell, who said his recent work criticizing Israel’s Gaza policy was ‘spiked’ Read Full Article at RT.com

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Oct 17, 2023 - 12:00
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Guardian ‘fires’ veteran cartoonist over Netanyahu sketch

Steve Bell’s work was reportedly deemed to be perpetuating an anti-Semitic trope

British newspaper The Guardian has ended its four-decade working relationship with cartoonist Steve Bell, who said his work criticizing the Israeli government’s stance on Gaza was rejected for using a supposedly anti-Semitic trope.

“The decision has been made not to renew Steve Bell’s contract,” a spokesman for the outlet told The Telegraph on Sunday.

The offending picture depicts Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu preparing to perform surgery on himself. He is seen wearing boxing gloves and holding a scalpel, poised to make a Gaza-shaped incision.

“Spiked again. It is getting pretty nigh impossible to draw this subject for the Guardian now without being accused of deploying ‘antisemitic tropes’,” Bell wrote on X (formerly Twitter) last week.

He claimed he received “an ominous phone call from the desk” after submitting the cartoon and was told: “Jewish bloke; pound of flesh; antisemitic trope”.

The cartoon was apparently perceived as an allusion to Shylock, the Jewish antagonist in Shakespeare’s play ‘The Merchant of Venice’, who demanded a pound of flesh from his Christian rival if he failed to repay a debt.

Bell said the comparison made no sense to him. The image included the caption “After David Levine,” referring to the late cartoonist of The New York Review of Books.

Levine’s 1966 work ‘Johnson’s Scar’ parodies a contemporary photo, in which then-US President Lyndon Johnson demonstrated the mark left after having his gallbladder removed. The cartoonist depicts the scar shaped as Vietnam, in reference to the US invasion.