The Sunday Times “apologized unreservedly” Sunday for
last week’s cartoon,
printed on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, of Prime Minister Binyamin
Netanyahu cementing a wall with blood and crushed Palestinian bodies.
“It
is one thing to attack and caricature a leader – and it is as legitimate to
attack Israeli leaders in cartoons as anyone else. But it is another thing to
reflect in a caricature, even unintentionally, historical iconography that is
persecutory or anti-Semitic,” the paper wrote as a leader on its editorial
page.
The paper said that the image of Netanyahu “reveling in the blood
of Palestinians, crossed a line. The image would have been a mistake on any day,
but the fact that last Sunday was Holocaust Remembrance Day compounded the
error.”
Calling publication of the Gerald Scarfe cartoon a “serious
mistake,” the paper said it “abhors anti- Semitism and racism of any type and we
would never set out to offend the Jewish people – or indeed any other ethnic or
religious group.”
The Prime Minister’s Office, which did not comment last
week on the offending cartoon, had no comment Sunday either.
The apology
appeared in the next edition of the paper following the publication of the
cartoon. Last week Rupert Murdoch, whose News Corp. owns the paper,
characterized the cartoon as “grotesque” and called on the paper to apologize.
The editor, Martin Ivens, did so during a meeting with leaders of British
Jewry.
Scarfe, in a message last week to the Jewish Chronicle, said only
that he regretted the timing of the cartoon, saying he was not aware that last
Sunday was Holocaust Remembrance Day.