WaPo Scrubs Cartoon 'in Poor Taste' From Site

Critics say editorial panel depicting Hamas leader wearing children as human shields was racist
By Jenn Gidman,  Newser Staff
Posted Nov 9, 2023 9:40 AM CST
Washington Post Scrubs Editorial Cartoon After Backlash
People walk by One Franklin Square, home of the "Washington Post," in downtown Washington on Feb. 21, 2019.   (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File)

An editorial cartoon in the Washington Post touching on the Israel-Hamas war has been scrubbed from the newspaper's website after reader backlash accused it of being racist and dehumanizing to Palestinians. That's per the Post itself, which reports that the cartoon by Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Ramirez was taken down Wednesday in response to the reaction. The cartoon, titled "Human Shields," shows a Hamas operative with what Al Jazeera describes as a "comically large" nose and scowling countenance, with children and infants tied to his body and a hijab-wearing woman standing behind him.

The caption, which shows what the Hamas leader is saying, reads: "How dare Israel attack civilians." Response to the cartoon by Ramirez, a staff cartoonist for the Las Vegas Review-Journal who started contributing to the Post earlier this year, came swiftly. "Racist dehumanization" is how one observer described it. Others called it "in poor taste," per the Post. Still others pointed out that the depiction of the Hamas militant was similar to the way that Jewish people have sometimes been portrayed in cartoons. "I can't get over how this looks exactly like a traditional antisemitic character, just with a few modified features," one observer wrote, per Al Jazeera.

Another noted: "This is exactly how they used to depict Jews in European newspapers in the 1930s." In a Wednesday evening statement, David Shipley, the Post's opinion editor addressed the cartoon, which also appeared in the Tuesday print edition of the paper. "I saw the drawing as a caricature of a specific individual, the Hamas spokesperson who celebrated the attacks on unarmed civilians in Israel," Shipley wrote in an introduction to a group of letters reacting to the cartoon. "However, the reaction to the image convinced me that I had missed something profound, and divisive, and I regret that." (More Washington Post stories.)

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