Washington Post Apologizes And Takes Down Cartoon Criticized As ‘Racist’ – One America News Network

November 11, 2023 Stephanie Stahl US 0

WASHINGTON - MAY 31: A man walks past The Washington Post building May 31, 2005 in Washington, DC. The current edition of Vanity Fair reports that retired FBI official Mark Felt was the "Deep Throat" source who spoke to two Washington Post reporters about the Watergate scandal that forced President Richard Nixon to resign in 1974. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images) — WASHINGTON – MAY 31: A man walks past The Washington Post building in Washington, DC. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

OAN’s Stephanie Stahl
12:11 PM – Saturday, November 11, 2023

The Washington Post yielded to criticism from readers and removed an editorial cartoon following complaints that it was perceived as “racist” and dehumanizing towards Palestinians.

On Wednesday, the cartoon entitled “Human Shields,” was taken down after receiving backlash.

The cartoon shows a Hamas spokesperson is depicted saying, “How dare Israel attack civilians,” while a frightened woman and four small children are shown bound with rope to his body.

Owen Jones, a columnist for The Guardian, wrote, “This racist dehumanization is always a precondition for mass murder of the sort currently taking place in Gaza.”

David Shipley, the editorial page editor of The Washington Post, chose to remove the cartoon after it “was seen by many readers as racist.”

“This was not my intent,” Shipley wrote, before apologizing.

“I saw the drawing as a caricature of a specific individual, the Hamas spokesperson who celebrated the attacks on unarmed civilians in Israel. However, the reaction to the image convinced me that I had missed something profound, and divisive, and I regret that. Our section is aimed at finding commonalities, understanding the bonds that hold us together, even in the darkest times,” he wrote.

The newspaper relayed feedback from readers, who criticized it for allegedly perpetuating “racial stereotypes” and expressed discontent that the cartoon seemed to attribute the deaths of Palestinian civilians to Hamas rather than Israel.

“The caricatures employ racial stereotypes that were offensive and disturbing. Depicting Arabs with exaggerated features and portraying women in derogatory, stereotypical roles perpetuates racism and gender bias, which is wholly unacceptable,” one reader from Fairfax, Virginia, wrote in a letter to the Post.

“I am a scholar of religion and media; I recognize a deeply racist depiction of the ‘heathen’ and his barbarous cruelty toward women and children when I see it again in Michael Ramirez’s Nov. 8 editorial cartoon. It is in no way informative, helpful or thought-provoking to look at this conflict through the glasses of 19th-century colonialists,” Suzanne van Geuns, a postdoctoral research associate at Princeton University, criticized.

Others on social media had a different reaction to the cartoon, saying there is “nothing wrong” with it.

👏🏽It’s a cartoon, y’all. There is nothing wrong with this cartoon, @davidshipley. Hamas uses human shields. And then criticize civilian death. I get it. I lost respect for @washingtonpost for real. They really took down a cartoon. A cartoon.

— BLAsian is Black (@black_blasian) November 11, 2023

I have ZERO problems with people criticizing Israel. But what I can’t stand is when they defend hamas, those psychopaths that use children as human shields. This cartoon is ACCURATE!

— Paulo 🎗🌳 (@Paulo_2079) November 11, 2023