FAIR Reports: A “Double Standard in Israel/Palestine Cartooning”

D. D. Degg Updated: March 28, 2025 at 9:31 am EDT 1 minute 2 comments

“Watch your step,” says the soldier as he and a medic lead a hostage over a mound of corpses labeled “Over 40,000 Palestinians killed…” The caption reads, “Some Israeli Hostages Are Home After Years of Merciless War.” This cartoon by Jeff Danzinger (Rutland Herald, 1/20/25) was selected by editorial page editor Tony Doris to run in the Palm Beach Post (1/26/25).

That Doris and Danzinger are both of Jewish descent did not deter the complainers. Neither did their politics. Doris (Stet News, 3/2/25) describes himself as pro-Israel, as well as the Post‘s “only Jewish editor.” Danzinger told comics scholar Kent Worcester (Comics Journal, 11/05) that he agreed “with a great many things that the Republicans have been traditionally for,” and that he voted for George H.W. Bush twice.

Doris’ ordeal was similar to the one cartoonist Rob Rogers suffered ten years ago. Rogers drew Palestinians huddled in a tiny prison, beset on all sides by missiles and Israeli soldiers. “Why do they hate us so much?” one trooper muses (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 8/7/14).

This cartoon, too, was characterized by pro-Israel readers as antisemitic. Richard Krugel of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Metropolitan Detroit proclaimed it something “out of the Nazi propaganda sheet Der Shturmer [sic]” (Oakland Press, 8/8/14).

or elsewise:

Editorial cartoonists often make a false connection between pro-Palestine activism and antisemitism.

Political cartoonists routinely compare Palestinians and the Palestinian cause to Nazis and Nazism … Kirk Walters showed pro-Palestine protesters as tiki-torch wielding white supremacists. One protester looked identical to Adolf Hitler (King Features, 10/18/23).

Symbols of Palestinian identity are equated with nefariousness. Two-time Pulitzer winner Michael Ramirez (Las Vegas Review-Journal, 5/2/24) explicitly placed the Palestinian flag at a rally side by side with a sign reading “We Side With Evil.” Other signs read “We Heart Terrorists” and “We Support Hamas.” Three days later, Ramirez (Las Vegas Review-Journal, 5/5/24) pinned a button reading “Hate” on a keffiyeh-wearing protester.

Hank Kennedy at Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting looks at the history of cartooning the Israeli-Gaza conflict.

The experiences of Doris and Rogers are clear examples of what civil rights lawyer Michael Ratner termed the “Palestine exception to free speech” (Real News Network, 4/27/15). Support for Palestinian rights is deemed to be an antisemitic attack on Israel, and therefore outside the boundaries of acceptable speech. The Palestine exception is glaringly apparent if a survey is conducted of how Palestinians are treated in political cartoons, and what consequences cartoonists suffer for these artistic choices.

Jeff Danziger, Rob Rogers, Kirk Walters, and Michael Ramirez cartoon samples are joined by fellow cartoonists Henry Payne, Gary Varvel, Dana Summers, Bob Gorrell, Chip Bok, Malcolm Mayes, and Steve Benson.

The article notes that nobody loses their job or clients over virulent anti-Palestinian cartoons.

Comments ²

Eric

“…But it wasn’t enough and, as Belén Fernández writes for FAIR.org, Israel’s US-endorsed resumption of all-out genocide”

Please note that if it was all-out genocide, there’d be no one left alive.

Also, “Real News Network” is Marxist/Leninist to a great extent, as well as genuinely antisemitic. We know this because a brief glance at the site will see “stories of resistance” all over the place celebrating M/L revolutionaries and the reverse-racist term “Aztlan” (https://therealnews.com/new-rumblings-in-aztlan-has-trumps-mass-deportation-sparked-a-chicano-power-resurgence). Also, half of the articles are attacks on Israel in every way they deem possible. They even have a link on I/P articles on the header at the top. Devoting that much bandwidth attacking Jews (including celebrating the cancellation of Chuck Shumer’s book tour—you know, the one on ANTISEMITISM—https://therealnews.com/baltimore-activists-target-chuck-schumers-book-tour) is antisemitic. I can go on.

I’ll end here with a riff as to why the Rob Rogers cartoon was INDEED antisemitic.

Rogers drew Palestinians huddled in a tiny prison, beset on all sides by missiles and Israeli soldiers. “Why do they hate us so much?” one trooper muses (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 8/7/14).

Had Rogers done a teensy bit of research, he’d have noticed that Israel had COMPLETELY WITHDRAWN from the area eight years before, and slightly thereafter, HAMAS took over, set up a Nazi statelet (You know, a totalitarian area focusing on hating the Jews and stealing all that foreign aid it was getting), and declaring war on the Jews in General and Israel in particular.

Remember, a good political cartoon is SUPPOSED to be OFFENSIVE!

I’m sorry to keep harping on this, but wanting to destroy the lives of the vast majority of Jews but not ALL of them is the essence of antisemitism.

Richard Furman

I too will note that Hamas as an organization is dedicated to the elimination of Jews from the earth, and that that was Yahaya Sinwar’s(y”s) stated goal on October 7th, and the entirety of the content Hamas’ charter. How do you answer an attack with genocide as its goal?

Now having said that, I will say too that too many editors are too afraid of flack. Yes people will complain, call you bad names. Editors need thicker skins.

But double standard? I’m not so sure. Seems to me that Ramirez got flack on more than one occasion, and the complaints rolled in. Tucking tail whenever someone takes offense at something is no way to run a newspaper.

I would rather argue the point out in the open and on the merits of the argument than take shelter behind the veil of “offense.” Because screaming “I’m offended!” isn’t advocacy, it’s cowardice.

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FAIR Reports: A “Double Standard in Israel/Palestine Cartooning”

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Eric

Richard Furman

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