Board seeks apology from Fairfax

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The NSW Jewish Board of Deputies has sought an apology from the Sydney Morning Herald for publishing a cartoon in last Saturday’s edition which they describe as being “crudely antisemitic”.

The cartoon, reminiscent of those of the Hitler era, depicts a stereotyped Jew sitting in a comfortable armchair with a cat by his side on a hilltop overlooking what one can only presume to be Gaza.  He is using a remote control seemingly to blow up buildings. The cartoon sits alongside an article on Gaza written by SMH columnist Mike Carlton.

There is no doubt about his ethnicity. Cartoonist Glenn Le Lievre has drawn him wearing a yarmulke and sitting on a chair with a large Star of David on its back.

The letter to the Sydney Morning Herald’s editor makes it clear that the Board considers the cartoon  to be invoking racial vilification and “inciting third parties to hatred of Jews”.

The Board has made it clear to the newspaper that they have received “a large number of complaints” from the community including many from Holocaust survivors who found the cartoon similar to ones they saw in the 1930s and 1940s in  the Nazi newspapers “Der Sturmer” and Volkscher Beobachter.

The Board has requested that an apology be published in the same location as it appeared last Saturday.

The Board has stated that if the Sydney Morning Herald does not take the desired action it will lodge a formal complaint with the NSW Anti-Discrimination Board.

Chairman of the Anti-Defamation Commission Dr Dvir Abramovich also commented on the cartoon:

“It’s fine to criticize Israeli policies but we are deeply shocked and  outraged by Le Lievre’s grotesque cartoon.

The classical stereotype of the yarmulke wearing, hooked nose, old Jew, together with the Star of David, has been a persistent theme in virulent anti- Semitic literature through the centuries. This is the venomous propaganda of Der Stumer recycled for a modern-day audience.

The cartoon portrays not just Israelis, but all Jews, as heartless, cold-blooded murderers, sitting at ease and in safety with a sleeping cat by their side, remote controlled detonator in hand, deliberately and indiscriminately bombing Gaza and killing Palestinian civilians. Given that Israel goes to remarkable lengths to avoid harming civilians through a variety of measures and that we are all saddened by the deaths on all sides, to suggest that Jews and Israelis are cavalier and relaxed about the suffering caused by this conflict is so profoundly removed from the truth and is meant to denigrate, vilify and demonize.

Millions of Israeli citizens have been under incessant attack, forced to flee into bomb shelters several times a day to escape rockets targeted at them by Hamas terrorists, whose openly declared goal is the destruction of the Jewish state. In no way can this sickening cartoon be justified as an acceptable and accurate depiction of what is actually occurring in Gaza.   Dredging up images that evoke age-old antisemitic representations, often used to incite hatred against Jews, is clearly indefensible. This was a breathtakingly poor and offensive choice and crossed all lines, and though it will do little to repair and reverse the damage of publishing such an antisemitic image, we urge the editor of the SMH to issue a full apology for publishing such a hurtful cartoon.”