Cartoonist portrays Israel as giant Nazi, and Jewish star as swastika

Knee-jerk liberal cartoonist Oliphant, meet knee-jerk paleocon anti-Semite Taki (whom I didn’t call an anti-Semite until this). Taki thus has the distinction of having called Israel both the Hitler of countries and the Bernard Madoff of countries. Concerning the latter statement, I said this:

This Bernie Madoff of countries, this perfidious and lying Jew of a country, this country whose entire history from its founding has been one vast act of fraud and theft making it deserving of Arab attacks and denying it the right of self defense, this country led by “butchers”—such is Taki’s picture of Israel and the Jews. With those remarks, Taki’s anti-Israelism crossed the line into anti-Semitism, and of a particularly gross and disgusting kind.

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Laura G. writes:

My daughter cancelled her subscription to the New York Times. This cartoon was the last straw. This is the letter she got. In my opinion, it is an inadequate response. The Times did not actually apologize. In addition, when that link was made, someone at The Times must have seen the cartoon and failed to issue a “Houston, we have a problem” alert. The “nobody here did it” excuse just does not cut the mustard on this grotesquery.

Letter by Laura G.’s daughter to Times:

To: feedback@nytimes.com (feedback@nytimes.com)

That cartoon by Pat Oliphant that you published on March 26 was the final straw. Disgusting. I’m canceling my subscription.

Shame on you.

Catherine G.

Reply by Times:

Dear Valued New York Times Reader,

The offending cartoon by Oliphant was not and will not be published in The New York Times. It did not appear on our Web site either. What did appear there, by a long-standing contractual arrangement with a company called uclick.com, is an “Oliphant” button. This button on the cartoons page took people who clicked on it on March 25 to that cartoon, which is now relegated to the Oliphant archive.

Nobody at The Times, therefore, made any decision to “publish” the cartoon. But, though the click gets you to a uclick.com page, regrettably in this case, the banner on the page says “The New York Times …..Cartoons.”

We are currently reviewing that arrangement.

Thank you for contacting The New York Times. We appreciate your readership—and your taking the time to write.

Regards,
Kerry Scott
www.nytimes.com/help

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 28, 2009 01:42 PM | Send