The London Sunday Times published an editorial cartoon showing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu building a wall on the bodies of Palestinians and using their blood as cement.
The cartoon published Sunday, which was International Holocaust Memorial Day, carries the caption “Israeli Elections … Will Cementing Peace Continue?”
In a statement, the European Jewish Congress called the cartoon “sickening” and “offensive,” and said the paper and cartoonist Gerald Scarfe should apologize.
“This cartoon would be offensive at any time of the year, but to publish it on International Holocaust Remembrance Day is sickening and expresses a deeply troubling mindset,” EJC President Moshe Kantor said in the statement. “This insensitivity demands an immediate apology from both the cartoonist and the paper’s editors.
“Amazingly, as this cartoon was published days after the only democracy in the Middle East, Israel, underwent fully democratic elections, as others in the Middle East were being butchered by the tens of thousands, the Sunday Times focuses its imagination solely on the Jewish State.”
HonestReporting called the cartoon “a blood libel on a day when the millions of victims of the Holocaust are remembered.”
“On any day, this cartoon’s imagery is an assault on the real victims of genocide, demeans their suffering and insults their memory,” said HonestReporting CEO Joe Hyams in a statement issued Sunday by the organization. “The Sunday Times should be mindful that what started as cartoons in the 1930′s ultimately led to violence and unspeakable tragedy.”
Scarfe also drew the cover illustration for Pink Floyd’s 1979 album “The Wall.” Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters has been a critic of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.