The British newspaper The Guardian fired its long-time (over 40 years) cartoonist Steve Bell after he submitted what is being called an anti-Semitic political cartoon (above).
Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…
Does that cartoon justify termination?
A couple of points: As I have stated here frequently, I think almost all political cartoons today are bad journalism and poor humor: not witty or funny, and excuses for partisan hacks to get away with ad hominem attacks, dishonest spin and simple-minded arguments that would not be acceptable from print journalists. Secondly, I have no idea of the context of this action. Maybe Bell was already on thin ice with the paper, and this cartoon was just the final straw.
That said, I don’t understand the claims of either Bell or his critics, and I really don’t get the cartoon, other than the fact that it is uncomplimentary toward Benjamin Netanyahu. Critics are claiming the cartoon is an anti-Jewish reference to Shylock, the villainous Jewish moneylender in “The Merchant of Venice” who demands a ‘pound of flesh’ as his payment for a loan from the Gentile hero of the drama. What??? Shylock didn’t seek flesh from his own body, as the cartoon Prime Minister of Israel seems to be about to extract under this interpretation. And why would Shylock be wearing boxing gloves? Heck, why is Netanyahu wearing boxing gloves? What does it all mean?
Bell, for his part, explains that the cartoon is an homage to a Sixties David Levine cartoon showing Lyndon Johnson with a Vietnam-shaped scar on his torso. LBJ had famously lifted up his shirt to show a surgery scar on his…oh, never mind. It still makes no sense, but Bell did have “after David Levine” written on the drawing. Why would he think anyone would remember a 60-year old cartoon, or care about an homage to it if they did?
Simply criticizing Netanyahu shouldn’t get Bell sacked, even it the criticism is unfair. The cartoon isn’t anti-Semitic, but it is an unusually lousy political cartoon, incoherent and unfunny. Should a veteran cartoonist be fired for submitting one stinker? Of course not. If this was just another in a long chain of poor submissions, however, that’s a different matter altogether.
Meanwhile, will someone please explain to me what Bell was trying to say?
Ethics Alarms 
I take the cartoon as Netanyahu’s self-inflicted wound (?) will damage the state of Israel, but I don’t get why he is holding a scalpel while wearing boxing gloves, either. Was Netanyahu a boxer of some note? Is it a critique that Netanyahu has always had a ham-fisted approach to the Israel-Palestine issue? Not sure, but I had no idea what the David Levine reference was, and as for Shylock, that flew over my head and smacked right into the wall.
jvb
I saw the gloves as kind of an allusion to “a bear cub in boxing gloves trying to scratch his left nut”, I don’t think it’s the *type* of gloves that are important so much as that they’d make his self-inflicted-wound of a surgery messier.
You got me.
I did not even realize he was cutting it out of his own torso until you pointed it out. It looked to me like his torso was a table that he was barely able to see over.
I thought he was cutting Gaza out of a map that was not even there. Huh?
Boxing gloves? (????)
Big nose and ears? Well, the nose is part of a Jewish stereotype, but this does not look like an unfair caricature of Netanyahu, especially considering the ears.
And, the reference to David Levine made no sense without the specific explanation.
Bewildering and unfunny. Unethical? I don’t know; I would have to “get it” before I could make that judgment.
-Jut
My 2p:
The image reflects the 1961 self appendectomy by Leonid Ivanovich Rogozov at Novolazarevskaya Station Antarctica.
Netanyahu is removing an inflamed, but otherwise unnecessary, organ attached to Israel, but he has hampered his self surgery with rules or some other political impairment (boxing gloves) .
As for anti semitic? Excising Gaza could certainly be seen as pro Israel/anti-Palestinian, but with the Netanyahu government being hampered by the gloves (whatever they are supposed to mean as some legal or political effort to restrict the excision of Gaza) it could also be read that the restrictions will make it impossible to make clean cuts.
Regardless, it’s one of those Rorschach political cartoons where you see what you want to see.
What this has to do with David Levine I don’t know.
Just as it is unethical to pander to the lowest common denominator when creating art, it is also unethical to engage in political commentary, even artistic political commentary, that is not clear in its meaning.
Political cartoons were never meant to be esoteric.
Oh my bias!
It seems that I have been on a fountain pen fixation lately.
I thought he was drawing on himself with a fountain pen.
Usually, I use a black Sharpie(other colors bleed to indeciferability) to make lists on my arm so I don’t forget important things like picking up my kids from school.
Perhaps Bibi has made reference to “surgical strikes” and the Israeli military’s “surgical precision” in its targeting Hamas? So, he’s a surgeon, but he’s wearing boxing gloves (not good “surgical” practice) and he’s operating on himself (ditto re “surgical” practice), without an anesthetic (ditto, etc.).
If submitting this cartoon for editorial consideration is the only reason for firing the guy, that’s nuts.
(And if the above explication is correct, he should have had Bibi saying something “surgical.”)
https://hti.osu.edu/opper/lesson-plans/cold-war-conflict-in-vietnam-the-vietnam-era-presidency/images/johnsons-scar
The original is much better.
This attempt at cartooning only made me think of Leonid Rogozov, the doctor who famously performed his own appendix removal on an Antarctic expedition.
“Better” is an understatement. It’s clear, it makes a valid point, it is unambiguous, and the analogy of LBJ’s actual scar to that war’s effect on his administration is sharp.
Gaza = Hamas = A malignancy that must be excised, and he’s doing so in the clumsiest manner possible?