Antisemitic cartoons proliferate in Mideast amid Israel-Hamas war, ADL report finds
Illustrations published by Arabic-language press since October 7 tap into conspiracy theories and blood libel to criticize the war in Gaza
Political cartoonists in the Arabic-language press have dramatically increased their use of antisemitic tropes and conspiracy theories in the wake of the October 7 Hamas onslaught in Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza, the Anti-Defamation League found in a report published Thursday.
The report, titled “Antisemitism in Arab Cartoons During the Israel-Hamas War,” detailed numerous instances of antisemitic tropes that have been published in Middle Eastern and Arabic-language newspapers and websites since the start of the war.
The cartoons appeared in Palestinian publications as well as in publications from Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. They also appeared in Arabic-language news outlets based in the UK, the ADL added.
According to the American Jewish organization, the cartoons published by the news outlets included references to Jews controlling US politics and Western media, with multiple drawings featuring the Jewish Star of David pasted onto the Statue of Liberty, implying that Israel controls the United States.
One cartoon, titled “The Lie of Zionist Media,” features a Jew dressed in traditional religious garb but with a microphone in place of a nose, drawing inspiration from Nazi-era antisemitic caricatures of Jews with large noses.
A large portion of the cartoons make comparisons between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Adolf Hitler or between the Gaza Strip and Nazi death camps. Several feature depictions of Jewish religious symbols being used as weapons, such as an illustration of a menorah that sports barrels of TNT instead of candles.
The cartoons also included “frequent references” to blood libel, an old antisemitic lie that Jews consume the blood of their victims as part of archaic religious rituals.
Several cartoons depict Netanyahu drinking blood or eating bones, and in one illustration, published in Libya, he is given the title “The Butcher of Gaza.”
In addition, the ADL found that Israel is “repeatedly dehumanized and demonized as an animalistic killer of civilians,” as across multiple cartoons, Israel is depicted as a rat, a snake, a crocodile, a shark, a caterpillar and a wolf.
Multiple illustrations also depict Israel as the Grim Reaper or as Satan.
“The antisemitism we’re seeing in these political cartoons from across the region is completely unhinged and grotesque,” said ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt.
“It’s as if the cartoonists were trying to outdo each other in the level of sheer offensiveness. And there’s zero accountability in these countries, whose leaders are either willfully ignoring or implicitly encouraging these hateful depictions through their silence. After October 7, we know where this heightened level of antisemitic incitement can lead in the Arab street.”
The ADL added that it would be sharing copies of the report with members of the US Congress, US President Joe Biden’s administration and officials in the State Department.
“ADL has been tracking antisemitic cartoons in the Arab press for more than two decades, and while we’ve raised the issue repeatedly with the leaders of many of these countries, there’s been very little progress in fixing the problem,” said Marina Rosenberg, ADL senior vice president of international affairs.
“There is plenty of room for legitimate criticism of Israeli government policies and actions without resorting to classic antisemitic stereotypes.”
There has been a sharp increase in antisemitism around the world since the October 7 Hamas massacres in southern Israel, in which some 1,200 people were murdered and over 240 abducted to Gaza, and Israel’s subsequent war against the Palestinian terror group.
Between October 7 and December 7, the ADL recorded 2,031 antisemitic incidents in the United States, the highest ever two-month number since the organization began tracking antisemitism in 1979.
