At the Guardian, they’ve fired cartoonist Steve Bell.
His drawing of Benjamin Netanayahu was deemed anti-Semitic and Bell, 72, who has served the paper for more than 40 years, winning awards, is no more.
The image depicted the Israeli prime minister preparing to cut open his own stomach with a scalpel. On his stomach was outlined a map of Gaza.
The caption said: “Residents of Gaza, get out now.” The paper’s taste monitors said it was referring to a “pound of flesh”, the terrible demand from the Jewish Shylock in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. Bell insists it’s a reference to the famous Sixties cartoon by David Levine, characterising US president Lyndon B Johnson with a Vietnam-shaped scar on his torso during the Vietnam war.
To make his point, Bell inserted the words “After David Levine” above the credit. It was not enough.
In the eyes of some he was likening the Israeli leader to Shylock and the money lender’s unreasonableness, and he had to go. There is a back story to this.
This is not the first time Bell’s work has provoked upset. Previously, the paper has leapt to his defence.
Not on this occasion. The Guardian has introduced a new vetting system, which applies, according to Bell “even for undrawn cartoons”.
Tellingly though, there does not appear to have been much discussion, no attempt to ask him for another illustration, no concession from Bell. That suggests a breakdown in relations.
He is a big character, in the “difficult to manage” category. It does not mean Kath Viner, the editor, saw her opportunity and made her move to oust him; rather that neither side was prepared to give way, that underneath they’re both fed up with each other.
Viner’s acuity was probably already raised this year. Then, following a cartoon by Martin Rowson, she was visited by a delegation from the British Board of Deputies. They were objecting to an image of Richard Sharp, the former BBC chairman. Included in the scene were a pig’s head, a puppet Rishi Sunak and Boris Johnson on a pile of money.
After complaints, the paper withdrew the cartoon from its website and apologised to the Jewish community. Rowson also apologised. It was a “mistake” he said, a “car crash”. Rowson had not been aware it was anti-Semitic and once the anti-Jewish stereotypes were pointed out to him, he was “consumed with deep, devouring shame”.
The Board of Deputies said of Rowson’s apology: “We have seen the thoughtful piece Martin Rowson has written…We hope that other cartoonists and satirists will internalise it, and that this is not something which the Jewish community will have to experience again.”
Well they have, and Viner has called a halt.
Bell is probably right when he says, “It is getting pretty nigh impossible to draw this subject for The Guardian now without being accused of deploying ‘anti-Semitic tropes’.” Viner is probably right if she spots something that can be construed as anti-Semitism and bars it.
As a former newspaper editor, I like to think I would have let the Bell cartoon through, that I would put freedom of expression first, that I would regard this as a slippery slope and soon, I would be cancelling everything. But would I? Unlike Viner, I am not in the cauldron.
Even with the Levine reference, Bell would surely have been capable of seeing how it could be interpreted. Equally, Viner would surely have foreseen the charge of suppressing free speech.
There are no winners, only losers. Which in the present context at least appears apposite.
