{{Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch apologised on Monday for a “grotesque” cartoon in his London-based Sunday Times newspaper depicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu building a bloody wall trapping the bodies of Palestinians, after complaints from Jewish groups.}}<\/p>\n
The image, which shows Netanyahu holding a trowel dripping blood, was published on Holocaust Memorial Day and carried the caption “Israeli elections. Will cementing peace continue?”<\/p>\n
The Board of Deputies of British Jews said the cartoon was “shockingly reminiscent of the blood libel imagery more usually found in parts of the virulently anti-Semitic Arab press”.<\/p>\n
The so-called “blood libel” – accusations that Jewish peoples murder children and use their blood in rituals – go back centuries and have led to persecution and attacks.<\/p>\n
The wall image by the weekly paper’s cartoonist Gerald Scarfe was a reference to the barrier that Israel has been building for a decade on West Bank territory.<\/p>\n
The project was launched at the height of a Palestinian uprising and was billed as a way to stop suicide bombers from penetrating the country.<\/p>\n
The Sunday Times’s acting editor was due to meet Jewish community leaders in Britain on Tuesday to express his regrets over the cartoon, said a spokesman for Murdoch’s News International, the paper’s publisher.<\/p>\n
Murdoch said Scarfe had never reflected the opinions of the Sunday Times. “Nevertheless, we owe major apology for grotesque, offensive cartoon,” he said in a Twitter message.<\/p>\n
The Board of Deputies, representing Jewish communities in Britain, said it had lodged a complaint over the image with the Press Complaints Commission, an industry-run watchdog.<\/p>\n
“Its use is all the more disgusting on Holocaust Memorial Day, given the similar tropes levelled against Jews by the Nazis,” the board added.<\/p>\n
The paper denied the cartoon was anti-Semitic, saying it was aimed at Netanyahu and not the Israeli people. <\/p>\n
It said the timing of its publication was linked to the victory of Netanyahu’s party in last week’s Israeli elections.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch apologised on Monday for a “grotesque” cartoon in his London-based Sunday Times newspaper depicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu building a bloody wall trapping the bodies of Palestinians, after complaints from Jewish groups.}} The image, which shows Netanyahu holding a trowel dripping blood, was published on Holocaust Memorial Day and carried […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[101],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-5470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-internationl","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5470\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5470"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=5470"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=5470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}