Israeli cartoonist Amos Biderman is coming under fire for a cartoon depicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu flying a plane labeled “Israel” into a skyscraper with a US flag – a clear reference to the 9/11 destruction of the New York Twin Towers. The Anti-Defamation League demanded an apology. Amos, so far, isn’t giving one. A tweet reported on the website of his paper, Haaretz said:
“The message is that Bibi is arrogantly and wantonly destroying Israel’s ties with the U.S. and leading us to a disaster on the scale of 9/11,” Biderman explained in a tweet in Hebrew, according to Haaretz.
His paper offered regret for any misinterpretation:
Amos Biderman’s editorial cartoon was a reaction to the current state of mistrust between Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Obama administration, as reflected in Jeffrey Goldberg’s story in The Atlantic. Our famed, veteran cartoonist was aiming his criticism at Netanyahu’s recent announcements of new settlement expansion plans in East Jerusalem and the West Bank and at his insinuations that America is acting against Israel, depicting them as a wrong turn in Israeli policy that has rightfully elicited strong criticism from Washington. Biderman sought to warn against what he views as a grave threat to Israel, if its leadership continues to escalate its diplomatic confrontation with the United States.
Needless to say, Haaretz deeply honors and respects the memory of American and other victims of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. We regret any misreading of Biderman?s image as disrespectful to those who perished or to survivors of this horrible crime.
We reject any linkage between Biderman?s cartoon and patently false, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about alleged Israeli involvement in the 9/11 attacks. Haaretz has never given any stage to these defamatory libels, which were in no way on the mind of the cartoonist or the newspaper?s editors.
Biderman’s cartoon is fine… except it needs a few changes. Make the pilot Obama, the plane the US, and the flag on the building the Israeli flag. Now he’s getting at the truth.
The imagery is regrettable only because it will be widely misinterpreted by all those who see it outside of Israel as anti-Semitic conspiracy mongering. “The Jews planned 9/11” is, after all, commonly accepted fact among a certain crowd.
But the sentiment behind this is sadly accurate.