More US Campus Jew Hatred As Daily Bruin Publishes Antisemitic Cartoon

Another day, another dose of antisemitism from a US university, this time UCLA.

Jewish groups condemned the Daily Bruin, UCLA’s student newspaper, Monday morning for publishing what they said is an anti-Semitic cartoon.

The cartoon, drawn by Felipe Abejón, depicts Israeli Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu in front of the two pillars of the Ten Commandments. In the cartoon, the sixth commandment, “Thou shalt not steal” is written with the word “not” crossed out in red. Underneath, the seventh commandment, “Thou shalt not kill,” is written with Netanyahu shrugging in front of it saying “number 7 is next.”

Danny Siegel, President of USAC, UCLA’s student body government, released a statement on Facebook saying, “As a Jewish student at UCLA I am disgusted by the anti-Semitic claim in my school newspaper (Daily Bruin) that the Israeli government is purposefully using my Jewish faith to justify a policy matter.” He followed by writing that he, too, would be willing to criticize Israel’s government, but that stereotyping is unacceptable.

Rabbi Aaron Lerner, Executive Director of Hillel at UCLA, created a petition online and posted on Facebook, calling the cartoon an “Anti-Semitic form of Anti-Zionism in today’s Daily Bruin.” Many other student leaders and groups took to Facebook, outraged.

The Anti Defamation League (ADL) wrote in a response to the cartoon, calling it “deeply offensive, not to mention incorrect, to suggest that the Israeli government is willfully changing the tenets of the Jewish faith to reflect a policy matter.” They expressed a clear difference between criticizing Netanyahu’s government and “impugn[ing] core Jewish beliefs,” and that the types of stereotypes targeting “a specific religion should not be condoned.”

Tanner Walters, Editor-in-Chief of the Daily Bruin, cited a lapse of judgement in the editorial process that allowed the publication of the cartoon.  “This was a mistake that should have been caught at any point in the process, and it didn’t get caught,” he said. Walters said that the Daily Bruin has no formalized training process for religious, ethnic and cultural sensitivity training, and that editing teams rely on common sense to avoid mistakes of this nature.

The Daily Bruin released a letter of apology late Monday. “We strive to understand the community that we cover. So as part of our ongoing education, we are reaching out to local religious leaders to help our staff understand the historical context behind these kinds of hurtful images.”

Other have also condemned the cartoon.

As for the cartoonist himself, let’s just say his “apology” does not make things better.

“The point of the cartoon is that the Jewish faith does not have tenets of stealing, theft or murder and that the State of Israel is creating laws and has created a law that goes against that,” said Abejón, the cartoon’s creator. Abejón stated that the cartoon has no connection to Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), although he was a board member for the group last year. Late Monday afternoon, the SJP board, in a submission to the Daily Bruin, condemned the cartoon and confirmed that it had nothing to do with the illustration.

“I didn’t intend to offend anyone,” Abejón said. “I stand by what the cartoon represents, I also stand against anti-Semitism and against intolerance against [sic] the Jewish people. I apologize to anyone who has been offended, but I still stand behind what this cartoon says politically.”

Although I’m sure Igor Sadikov would dig it.

Note how SJP also condemned the cartoon. This is rich, coming from an organization that has created a hostile environment on campus for Jews, and which recently hosted a screening of antisemitic film The Occupation of the American Mind: Israel’s Public Relations War in the United States.

6 thoughts on “More US Campus Jew Hatred As Daily Bruin Publishes Antisemitic Cartoon”

  1. None of the people who condemned the cartoon seem to have noticed the REAL antisemitism of it.

    The really antisemitic assumption is that the law legalizes land theft.

    The Regulation Law says that, if someone buys land in good faith from a seller, believing in good faith that the seller has the right to sell the land and, years later, a third party shows up and claims ownership (whether there was fraud on the part of the seller, fraud on the part of an earlier seller, or an error in a land registry), then the third party cannot reclaim THAT LAND. The third party must accept compensation, either a parcel of land equal in value to that of the disputed land, or monetary compensation of 125% of the value of the disputed land.

    The cartoonist should have been condemned for his antisemitic assumption that the State of Israel would pass a law condoning theft, rather than for the much more minor antisemitism that would conflate Israel and Judaism..

    1. Indeed. It’s layer upon layer of falsehood and demonization.
      And the American Jews are often too ignorant and too apathetic to learn why Israel does what she does, and to defend her with facts; rather, they immediately concede that popular opinion on Israel must be correct, but how dare they conflate evil Israel with the Jewish faith.

  2. If you ask me, if the canard were actually true, that Israel were legalizing land theft, then the cartoon would be (almost) appropriate, as explained by the artist. He is contrasting the ethical commandments in the Decalogue with a policy which he assumes to constitute theft, and showing how the latter is a violation of the former.
    So, one, we’re seeing the antisemitism of willful ignorance of what Israel is actually doing, and using bigotry as a substitute.
    Two: That he puts a yarmulke on Netanyahu, and puts a speech bubble in his mouth asserting that Israeli Jews are planning mass-murder, is where this cartoon reaches Goebbels territory.

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