‘Blind’ NYT guided by anti-Semites: Israeli cartoonist draws response to controversial sketch

An Israeli illustrator drew his own version of the ‘anti-Semitic’ cartoon printed in the New York Times depicting PM Netanyahu as a guide dog leading ‘blind’ President Trump. RT asked people in Israel what they think.

Shay Charka, a cartoonist for Israeli newspaper Makor Rishon published his own ‘response’ to the controversial New York Times cartoon on Sunday after the leading US paper was accused of printing anti-Semitic imagery.

In Charka’s version, Donald Trump was swapped for a copy of the NYT and the dog’s head was replaced with a copy of ‘the Protocols ’– a reference to the so-called Protocols of the Elders of Zion – a century-old anti-Semitic forgery. First published in late-imperial Russia, the discredited document quickly became a centerpiece in anti-Semitic propaganda across the globe, claiming that Jews secretly seek world dominance.

The Star of David on the dog’s collar was likewise replaced with the letters ‘BDS’ – a jab at the pro-Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign that denounces Jewish settlements in the West Bank and has been accused by its critics of being anti-Semitic in nature.

Following the backlash, the NYT apologized for the “offensive” cartoon, calling it “an error of judgement.” It explained that the drawing was originally published in a Portuguese newspaper, before it was reprinted in the New York Times.

Not all were happy with the way the paper handled the controversy. “Apology not accepted,” the American Jewish Committee wrote on Twitter. “How many [the NYT] editors looked at a cartoon that would not have looked out of place on a white supremacist website and thought it met the paper’s editorial standards?”

Meanwhile, the people RT spoke to on the streets of Tel Aviv had mixed reactions to the cartoon. Some found it “for sure anti-Semitic.”

“It goes back to the old days in the 1940s when [Nazi paper] Der Sturmer used to have German Jews portrayed as lapdogs for American policy. That’s unbelievable and unacceptable,” one person said.

Others disagreed, arguing that the imagery was more “a political caricature,” rather than attacking Jews in general.

“I don’t think we have to be so sensitive and keep on bringing up anti-Semitic things every single time we see [cartoons like this],” an Israeli man told RT.

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