Sounds like the guardian wanted to get rid of him for a while. Apparently he has been involved in antisemitism incidents in the past. They don’t need the controversy he brings.
The Guardian was started by Unitarians who are supposed to be open to ideas, but now it fully embraces cancel culture and censorship, like any orthodoxy.
I mean I always found his cartoons annoyingly unfunny but I don't think there's anti-Semitism in this one. The general state of newspaper political cartoons actually being funny is pretty pathetic, they're still about as good as The Day Today's physical cartoonist Brandt.
But back on topic I it certainly looks like there's no grounds for anti-Semitism for this one.
The description of the comic didn’t sound anti-semetic, unless there’s some anti semetic trope that I’m unaware of. Being against the state of Israel, apartheid, ethno-states and genetic cleansing of Palestinians isn’t anti-semetic. Self surgery with boxing gloves actually seems rather apt imagery.
There’s no mention of past anti-semetism in the article either as far as I can see, something about Tories which I don’t quite understand the reference, nose rings? Is that a trope I don’t understand?
My understanding is that the cartoon is based on a cartoon of Lyndon B Johnson from decades ago. However, the cartoon uses the common metaphor of taking a “pound of flesh” from something to make it’s point.
That metaphor is attributed the character Shylock from Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice. Shylock is considered by many to be an offensive stereotype of a Jewish person (I think it is) that is sort of “tolerated” when used in a historical context, but not otherwise. i.e. if you call a Jewish person “Shylock”, expect rightly to be called a racist.
The cartoon applied to LBJ isn’t offensive because, afaik, he isn’t Jewish. But take the character and Netanyahu, smush them together and bam: antisemitism claims.
The cartoon applied to LBJ isn’t offensive because, afaik, he isn’t Jewish. But take the character and Netanyahu, smush them together and bam: antisemitism claims.
Also Johnson isn’t operating on himself - he’s just lifting his shirt to show the scar.
" The incident is not the first involving Bell, The Guardian and allegations of anti-Semitism against his cartoons. In 2018 he said he was censored by the newspaper’s editor, Katharine Viner, when the editorial team declined to publish a cartoon depicting a Palestinian medic shot dead by Israeli forces in a fireplace besides Netanyahu and then-prime minister Theresa May.
Bell subsequently sent the cartoon in an email to the entire Guardian editorial staff, from where it was leaked to Huffpost. Critics argued the image evoked Nazi gas chambers, which Bell responded was “the last thing on my mind when I drew it”.
Viner told The Guardian’s reader’s editor that Bell’s point “could easily have been made in a way that didn’t reference fire or ovens”.
In 2019, another of Bell’s cartoons – this time depicting Labour deputy leader Tom Watson as a witch hunter looking for anti-Semitic tropes – was blocked. In November 2020, The Guardian received 32 complaints of anti-Semitic imagery over a Bell cartoon which did make it to print and depicted Labour leader Keir Starmer holding the head of predecessor Jeremy Corbyn on a plate, alluding to the beheading of St John the Baptist. "
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