The Guardian fires renowned cartoonist over Netanyahu cartoon

The famous British newspaper The Guardian fired world-famous cartoonist Steve Bell (pictured by BBC) after a scandal caused by a caricature of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The cartoonist has been accused of anti-Semitism, which he denies.

“It’s now almost impossible to cover this story for the Guardian without being accused of anti-Semitism,” says Steve Bell.

In particular, the cartoon depicts Netanyahu with a bare stomach, performing a surgical operation on himself. The outline of the Gaza Strip is drawn on the stomach, which the prime minister is trying to cut out with a scalpel, and holds it with his hands in boxing gloves. “People of Gaza! Leave immediately”is written above his head.

Bell later noted that the idea was to show that the consequences of such a catastrophic operation were yet to be seen. In his social network account, X Bell said that he sent the drawing to the newspaper, and four hours later he received a call with a mysterious message: “A pound of flesh…”.

Just to explain. I filed this cartoon around 11am, possibly my earliest ever. Four hours later, on a train to Liverpool I received an ominous phone call from the desk with the strangely cryptic message "pound of flesh"… pic.twitter.com/kSfmfzlmhy

— Steve Bell (@BellBelltoons) October 9, 2023

According to Bell, he said he was sorry, I didn’t understand. To which they answered: “Jewish guy, pound of flesh, anti-Semitic image.” If you believe this version, then the editors of the Guardian newspaper saw in Bell’s cartoon a reference to Shakespeare’s play “The Merchant of Venice”. In it, the Jewish moneylender Shylock, lending money to the merchant Antonio, demands a pound of the merchant’s flesh as a penalty.

On the one hand, Shylock can be considered one of the stereotypical images of a Jew in English literature, whose main character traits are vindictiveness and greed.

On the other hand, Shakespeare put a monologue into the mouth of his hero, which can well be considered the fight against anti-Semitism in the 16th century: “Doesn’t a Jew have eyes? Is a Jew deprived of hands, sense organs, affections, passions? Doesn’t he eat the same food, hurt with the same weapons… experience heat and cold in winter and summer, just like a Christian? If we are pricked, don’t we bleed? …If poisoned, won’t we die? And if harm is done to us, shouldn’t we take revenge?“(Shakespeare. “The Merchant of Venice”III-1, translation by Hudson, 2014)

Bell, who worked at the newspaper for four decades, said it now refuses to print his work.

It seems that the Guardian did not go into literary details and “stupidly” fired its employee, thus coming under a barrage of criticism.

The artist said BBC: “The newspaper’s interpretation made no sense to me since my cartoon makes no reference to the play.”

“The image itself was inspired by the late, great cartoonist David Levine’s creation of President Lyndon Johnson showing off his surgery scar, which Levine depicted in the shape of a map of Vietnam,” he added.

This is not the first time Bell has been accused of anti-Semitism. In 2020, he was also accused of painting Sir Keir Starmer holding Jeremy Corbyn’s head on a plate, which some interpreted as a reference to the head of John the Baptist given to Salome, the daughter of the Jewish king Herod.

That same year, senior Conservative MP Sajid Javid tweeted that his cartoon depicting former Home Secretary Priti Patel and former Prime Minister Boris Johnson as bulls with nose rings was also “incredibly offensive”.

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