By Eldad Beck
Israel Hayom
April 28, 2019
The New York Times, the newspaper that boasts the title of the most influential newspaper in the United States and the world, published over the weekend a sickening anti-Semitic cartoon that would have put Nazi-era and Arab anti-Semitic cartoons to shame. In the cartoon, which appeared in the opinion pages of the newspaper’s international edition, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is depicted as an angry guide dog with a Star of David collar leading a blind, kippah-wearing U.S. President Donald Trump. This cartoon includes every possible anti-Semitic stereotype: Trump is depicted as Jewish, blind and dependent on the good graces of a Jewish dog that decides where he will go, in other words, controls the actions of a president who is unable to see. The cartoon sends a clear message: Netanyahu – and because he is marked as a Jew, for all intents and purposes, the Jewish people in general – controls Trump and obviously determines his policies on the Middle East, although the cartoon was situated above a piece on the U.S. immigration crisis, so also on other domestic matters.
Following the Israeli Consul General in New York Dani Dayan’s intervention, The Times’ editorial board took the anti-Semitic cartoon down from the newspaper’s website and announced a forthcoming apology. But is this enough, given the fact that The Times, which is identified with the American progressive Left, has contributed to the increasingly anti-Israel sentiments among a certain American public?
The Times has a shameful journalistic tradition as far as the Jews are concerned, despite, and possibly due to, the fact that its publisher and some of its most prominent writers are Jews. An examination of the paper’s reporting during World War II found that out of the 23,000 front-page news articles the newspaper published over those six years, only 26 concerned the Holocaust. Despite the fact that the paper had fairly precise information on what was happening to the Jews across Europe, The Times dedicated only marginal coverage to these reports. In a documentary on The Times coverage during the war, various interviewees raised the hypothesis that the paper’s Jewish publisher decided not to deal with the Holocaust out of concerns that reporting on German crimes against Jews would be detrimental to the newspaper’s image, given American public opinion on Jews at the time. One of those interviewed in the documentary, a former employee of the paper, insisted that The Times should not be blamed for its conduct at the time. Instead, he said people should note how the newspaper had since learned its lesson.
Really? The cartoon published just a few days ago is reminiscent of posters and cartoons published in Nazi Germany, which depicted Jews as controlling the U.S. and the rest of the allied powers, dictating their policies and forcing the world into war. The American sector known for harboring anti-Semitic sentiments in the 1930s and 1940s has been replaced by members of the American Left. These people grow more resentful of Israel the more the current U.S. administration comes to understand that the time has come to change the parameters of the reality in the Middle East and begin to think outside the box. In its anti-Israel approach, The Times reflects the stagnation and fixation of the worldviews of the American Left and its emissaries in Israel.
I remember well how they came out against me when I reported on The Times refusal to publish an article by South African jurist Richard Goldstone in which he expressed regret over his team’s report on “war crimes” Israel supposedly committed during 2008’s Operation Cast Lead. In this paper, it is not only forbidden to undermine Israel’s negative image, but it is also forbidden to reveal The Times’ warped journalistic methods.
The Times wants to issue an apology for an anti-Semitic cartoon? Be my guest. On the first page, in the top story, publish a detailed explanation of the anti-Semitic issues with the cartoon’s publication. At the same time, fire the editors who approved the cartoon’s publication, regardless of whether or not they are Jewish, along with the cartoonist. In addition, announce the establishment of an independent team to investigate The Times’ stance on Israel, from the end of World War II up until today. Any other response would be inconsequential and detrimental to the newspaper’s standing.
EDITOR’S NOTE: W. Heisenberg commented, “If you find the New York Times as everything you despise, consider this: It is emblematic of most American Jews, self loathing left-wingers (AKA "liberals") whom embrace the Times as the pinnacle of their sick world view. Fortunately for the world, they are having few children.”
Concerning the cartoon, Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan wrote: “The loathsome terrorist who carried out the murderous act in the California synagogue and killed the late Lori Gilbert Kaye was inspired to kill by the same anti-Semitic motives in the cartoon published in The New York Times … How much hatred and incitement that illustration contains.”
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