US Jews furious over 'Washington Post' cartoon showing Netanyahu punching Palestinian infant

The caricature is aimed at apportioning blame equally between Israel and Hamas for the suffering of Gazan civilians.

By JPOST.COM STAFF
A Washington Post caricature depicting Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu punching an infant. (photo credit: YOUTUBE SCREENSHOT)
A Washington Post caricature depicting Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu punching an infant.
(photo credit: YOUTUBE SCREENSHOT)
A prominent American Jewish organization is denouncing The Washington Post for posting an animated cartoon on its YouTube channel depicting Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu beating a Palestinian infant.
The caricature is aimed at apportioning blame equally between Israel and Hamas for the suffering of Gazan civilians. It was created by Ann Telnaes, one of the newspaper’s editorial cartoonists.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center declared its outrage over the cartoon. In a statement released to news agencies on Friday, the center’s associate dean, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, said the clip was “disgusting.”
"It is disgusting that The Washington Post would present an animated cartoon that is so profoundly removed from the truth," said Cooper. "Millions of Israeli citizens—men, women, and children—have been forced into bomb shelters and saferooms by thousands of missiles and rockets targeted at them by Hamas terrorists, whose open and avowed goal is the destruction of the Jewish state."
“Even Israel's enemies have recognized that Israel's military countermeasures against Hamas have included phone and text warnings as well as leaflets urging innocent civilians in Gaza to vacate the targeted areas," Cooper said. "It is the Hamas leadership that openly uses the people of Gaza to act as human shields to protect their weapons of mass destruction."
"Israelis are saddened by the deaths of four Palestinian children on a Gaza beach yesterday, but the blood of these innocent children is on the hands of Hamas leaders, not Binyamin Netanyahu," Rabbi Cooper also said.