Steve Bell’s work was reportedly deemed to be perpetuating an anti-Semitic trope
British newspaper The Guardian has ended its four-decade working relationship with cartoonist Steve Bell, who stated his work criticizing the Israeli authorities’s stance on Gaza was rejected for utilizing a supposedly anti-Semitic trope.
“The choice has been made to not renew Steve Bell’s contract,” a spokesman for the outlet informed The Telegraph on Sunday.
The offending image depicts Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu getting ready to carry out surgical procedure on himself. He’s seen sporting boxing gloves and holding a scalpel, poised to make a Gaza-shaped incision.
“Spiked once more. It’s getting fairly nigh unimaginable to attract this topic for the Guardian now with out being accused of deploying ‘antisemitic tropes’,” Bell wrote on X (previously Twitter) final week.
He claimed he acquired “an ominous cellphone name from the desk” after submitting the cartoon and was informed: “Jewish bloke; pound of flesh; antisemitic trope”.
Simply to elucidate. I filed this cartoon round 11am, probably my earliest ever. 4 hours later, on a prepare to Liverpool I acquired an ominous cellphone name from the desk with the unusually cryptic message “pound of flesh”… pic.twitter.com/kSfmfzlmhy
— Steve Bell (@BellBelltoons) October 9, 2023
The cartoon was apparently perceived as an allusion to Shylock, the Jewish antagonist in Shakespeare’s play ‘The Service provider of Venice’, who demanded a pound of flesh from his Christian rival if he did not repay a debt.
Bell stated the comparability made no sense to him. The picture included the caption “After David Levine,” referring to the late cartoonist of The New York Overview of Books.
Levine’s 1966 work ‘Johnson’s Scar’ parodies a recent photograph, through which then-US President Lyndon Johnson demonstrated the mark left after having his gallbladder eliminated. The cartoonist depicts the scar formed as Vietnam, in reference to the US invasion.
Most of us can barely scratch at a data of 1 not to mention each!It took me ten minutes Googling earlier than I may discover David Levine’s 1966 ‘Johnson’s Scar’ cartoon that I used to be beforehand unaware of. (A few of us aren’t studying Robert Caro’s LBJ biography!) pic.twitter.com/yji8bXyge7
— Lang Rabbie 🇺🇦 Justified & Historic of Hyperlocal (@langrabbie) October 16, 2023
Bell was beforehand accused of anti-Semitism over a 2020 cartoon, through which Labour Occasion chief Keir Starmer was proven holding the decapitated head of his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn on a platter. It was a commentary on the withdrawal of Corbyn’s social gathering whip for his refusal to just accept accusations of anti-Semitism.
The cartoon was perceived as an allusion to Salome within the Bible, who when her father King Herod II provided her something, demanded the top of John the Baptist.
The incident comes at a tense political time, with the UK authorities totally supporting Israel in its marketing campaign in opposition to Hamas. The IDF is presently bombarding Gaza in retaliation for a lethal raid by the Palestinian militant group earlier this month.
