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10-11-2023
WASHINGTON: The Washington Post took down an editorial cartoon Wednesday that depicted a Hamas leader using civilians as human shields, after the drawing was criticized as racist and dehumanizing toward Palestinians.
In a note to readers, David Shipley, editorial page editor of The Post, said the cartoon was initially meant to caricature a specific Hamas spokesman. But the backlash to the cartoon convinced him that he had “missed something profound, and divisive.”
“Our section is aimed at finding commonalities, understanding the bonds that hold us together, even in the darkest times,” Shipley wrote. “In this spirit, we have taken down the drawing.”
The opinions section also ran several letters criticizing the decision to run the cartoon.
(The newsroom, overseen by Executive Editor Sally Buzbee, operates independently from the opinions section.)
The cartoon by Michael Ramirez, titled “Human Shields,” drew criticism Wednesday, both for its message and the exaggerated features of its Palestinian subjects.
In his cartoon, a man with a large nose and snarling mouth, labeled “Hamas,” stands bound with ropes to four alarmed children and a cowering woman in a hijab. “How dare Israel attack civilians …” he says.
On social media, several readers called it “in poor taste.” In a post on Instagram, Palestinian American poet Remi Kanazi wrote: “This is the Washington Post. This is the kind of anti-Palestinian racism that’s acceptable for publication.” Left-wing British activist Owen Jones called the cartoon an example of “racist dehumanization.”
The cartoon also appeared in Tuesday’s print newspaper, displayed prominently in the opinion pages, below an editorial board-written column about the GOP debate and surrounded by letters to the editor.
Ramirez, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner on the staff of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, started contributing cartoons to The Post in May. While The Post published his work almost weekly through the summer, the “Human Shields” cartoon was the first of his to appear since late September, a couple weeks before the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel.
Ramirez, though, had addressed the conflict in several cartoons for the Review-Journal. Last week he published one showing a woman wearing a Black Lives Matter T-shirt, holding up a sign that says “Terrorist Lives Matter” and “Blame Israel. Support Hamas.”
According to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, more than 10,000 people in Gaza have been killed in attacks that followed the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, when militants killed more than 1,400 people and took about 240 hostage. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
