New York, NY, January 28, 2013 … The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today welcomed the apology of News Corp Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch for a cartoon in The Sunday Times of London that portrayed the Israeli prime minister constructing a wall with the blood and bodies of murdered Palestinians.
“There was nothing subtle about the caricatured image of Prime Minister Netanyahu using the blood of Palestinians to build a wall,” said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director. “While Mr. Murdoch’s apology is welcome, we nevertheless found it disturbing that the newspaper’s senior editors have vigorously defended the cartoon as a form of legitimate criticism. The cartoon, which is so shocking and reminiscent of the virulently anti-Semitic cartoons we see routinely in the Arab press, is clearly indefensible.”
ADL earlier condemned the cartoon as blatantly anti-Semitic, saying that the image of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu using Palestinians and their blood to build a wall to “protect” Israelis constituted a modern day evocation of the ancient "blood libel" charge leveled at Jews through the centuries.
On Twitter, Mr. Murdoch, whose company owns The Sunday Times, wrote that the cartoon was “grotesque” and “offensive” and he said that the cartoonist responsible for the image, Gerald Scarfe, had never reflected the opinions of the newspaper.
