The left’s alarming and increasingly blatant Anti-Semitism has reached new lows. The New York Times International edition published an absolutely appalling cartoon depicting Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, who is featured as a dachshund, leading a presumably “blind” President Trump.It is so horrifically offensive that the New York Times has since deleted the image online and issued an Editor’s Note explaining that publishing it was an “error in judgment” because the cartoon is “offensive” for containing “anti-Semitic tropes.” I’m not sure how effective such a note can possibly be since we have all just had (re)confirmed our worst fears about that publication.The Jerusalem Post reports:
The New York Times International Edition ran a cartoon of an apparently blind US President Donald Trump wearing a yarmulke being led by a dog with a Star of David for a collar and with a face of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on April 25.The cartoon was part of its Opinion section and appeared next to a column by Thomas Friedman about immigration.The cartoon was condemned by numerous people over the weekend. It appeared on the April 25 edition but in Israel was available with the end of the Passover holiday, coinciding with the holiday and Shabbat, two days when many observant Jews were not active online.
The much deserved condemnation came from across the political and religious spectrum.
The New York Times issued the following tweet depicting the upcoming “Editor’s Note.”
Here is a screencap of the note itself via the above tweet.
It’s rather underwhelming and not going over well.
Seth Frantzman, writing at the Jerusalem Post, has a scathing response to the NYT’s Editor’s Note. He begins by explaining that like most of us, when he first saw the cartoon and that it was in the NYT, he didn’t think it was real.
At a time of rising antisemitism, when we have become increasingly exposed to the notion of dog whistles and tropes that are antisemitic, when there is a lively and active debate about this issue in the US, The New York Times International Edition did the equivalent of saying “hold my beer.”. . . . I didn’t believe the cartoon was real when I first saw it. Many of my colleagues didn’t believe it either. I spent all day Saturday trying to track down a hard copy. I phoned friends, I got a PDF of the edition, and even then I didn’t believe it.I had to see for myself. So I drove to a 24-hour supermarket. There on the newsstand was the April 25 edition. I flipped gingerly through, fearing to see Page 16.And then I found it. It stared back at me: That horrid image of a blind US President Donald Trump with a yarmulke being led by a dog with the face of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Worse, the dog was wearing a Star of David as a collar.This is what The New York Times thinks of us Israelis. Even if they subsequently said it was an error, they thought it was okay to print a cartoon showing the US president being blindly led by the “Jewish dog”?And not only that, those who watched as it went to print thought it was fine to put a Jewish skullcap on the US president. Dual loyalty? No need to even wrestle with that question.It used to be that we were told that Trump was fostering “Trump antisemitism” and driving a new wave of antisemitism in the US. But the cartoon depicts him as a Jew. Well, which is it? Is he fostering antisemitism, or is he now a closet Jew being led by Israel, depicted as a Jewish dog? We used to say that images “conjured up memories” of 1930s antisemitism. This didn’t conjure it up; this showed us exactly what it looked like.
Frantzman then tackles the pathetic, reductive Editor’s Note.
. . . . The New York Times acknowledged this in a kind of pathetic way. They admitted that the cartoon “included antisemitic tropes.” It then noted, “The image was offensive and it was an error of judgement to publish it.”That’s not enough. An error of judgment would imply that it was just a kind of mistake. “Tropes” would imply that to some people it is antisemitic, but that it’s not clear as day.But this is clear as day.This isn’t like some story of unclear antisemitism. This isn’t a dog whistle. This is a dog. This is antisemitic on numerous levels. It’s time to say no more. It’s time to say “They shall not pass.”This should be a defining moment. It is a defining moment because one of America’s most prestigious newspapers did this, not some small town newspaper somewhere.
Over at the Spectator, Dominic Green provides his own scathing commentary before offering his take on what the NYT should say instead of resting on “tropes” and an “error of judgment.”
What the Times should have said was:
‘We ran a blatantly anti-Semitic cartoon. At a time when anti-Jewish violence and incitement is at levels not seen since 1945, we chose to place gutter racism on our pages. We did this because plenty of our editors share the prejudice of this cartoon; if in doubt, look at our unsigned editorials.‘We’re so soaked in this that none of us thought that it might be an error to publish a cartoon with clear precursors in fascist, communist, Arab nationalist and Islamist propaganda. Rather than explain this away in the passive tense, we’re going to name the editors who signed off on this cartoon, and fire them.’
Of course, the Times will do none of this.
That sounds about right, but as Green notes, it will never happen. Because it’s all true.
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