The New York Times announced to The Daily Beast Monday that they are cutting ties with a cartoon syndicate after an anti-Semitic cartoon was published in the April 25 international edition of the paper.
The cartoon depicted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a guide dog leading President Donald Trump, who is wearing sunglasses and a yarmulke in the cartoon. António Moreira Antunes, a Portugese cartoonist, drew the cartoon; CartoonArts International, a New York-based cartoon syndicator, supplied the cartoon to the Times.
Dear @nytimes,
Please allow me 3 questions:
Has the full chain of command for approving this incendiary, antisemitic cartoon been identified?
Will there be any serious consequences for those involved in the decision?
Have steps been taken to ensure this won’t happen again? https://t.co/BfNoAnDL7O
— David Harris (@DavidHarrisNY) April 28, 2019
Another Antunes-drawn cartoon was published in the weekend edition of the paper, depicting Netanyahu as Moses holding a tablet with the Star of David in one hand and a selfie stick in the other.
Wait…the @nytimes featured ANOTHER Netanyahu cartoon? This one AFTER the Thursday cartoon depicting Netanyahu as a dog? Am I reading this right? Is the Times obsessed with Israel’s prime minister? pic.twitter.com/r1KsSaYWtw
— Dan Senor (@dansenor) April 29, 2019
“The cartoon that ran in the international print edition of The Times last Thursday was clearly anti-Semitic and indefensible and we apologize for its publication,” Times spokesperson Eileen Murphy told The Daily Beast. “While we don’t think this [second] cartoon falls into that category, for now, we’ve decided to suspend the future publication of syndicated cartoons.”
Greenblatt told The Daily Beast that the April 25 cartoon reflected “the normalization of anti-Semitism” and that it was “unconscionable” for the Times to run a cartoon “that clearly communicates that Jews have excessive control, or that Jews manipulate events.”
Antunes defended his April 25 cartoon in an April 30 email to The Jerusalem Post, arguing that the cartoon showed that Trump’s “often blind politics” are emboldening Netanyahu’s “expansionist radicalism.”
“An analogy occurred to me with a blind man (Trump) led by a guide dog (Netanyahu) and, to help identify him, little known in Portugal, I added the Star of David, symbol of the State of Israel and central element of its flag,” Antunes wrote.
Other controversial Antunes cartoons involving Israel include a 1983 cartoon comparing Israeli soldiers to Nazis and a 2006 cartoon with a bloody Star of David tied around an American flag-themed leg and the Islamic crescent moon tied around another leg with dynamite.
Note that Antonio Antunes Moreira (from NYT antisemitic cartoon fame) was responsible for this cartoon in 1983 comparing #Israeli treatment of #Palestinians to the Nazis' treatment of Jews – by evoking the iconic Warsaw Ghetto photo
h/t @hmemcpy pic.twitter.com/tzjF3vkg4Z
— Adam Levick (@adamlevick) April 28, 2019
The cartoonist, Antonio Antunes Moreira, has touched on the same theme before. pic.twitter.com/f29o0AUP3O
— Elder of Ziyon 🇮🇱 (@elderofziyon) April 28, 2019
