The Washington Post opinion page retracted a cartoon Wednesday that depicted a Hamas leader using human shields after it was widely criticized for perpetuating racist stereotypes. “I saw the drawing as a caricature of a specific individual, the Hamas spokesperson who celebrated the attacks on unarmed civilians in Israel,” wrote Post opinion editor David Shipley in a note to readers. “However, the reaction to the image convinced me that I had missed something profound, and divisive, and I regret that.”
The cartoon, drawn by conservative cartoonist Michael Ramirez, depicts a Hamas representative with an exaggerated nose and a snarling mouth, cowering behind a Palestinian woman and several children. “How dare Israel attack civilians,” the spokesperson says in the drawing.
Shipley’s note comes after a number of critical letters were sent to the editor, who published a selection of the responses below his note. In one, a religious scholar at Princeton University called the cartoon “a deeply racist depiction of the ‘heathen’ and his barbarous cruelty toward women and children.” Another described it as “an attempt at excusing Israeli war crimes.”
“This is The Washington Post,” Palestinian American poet Remi Kanazi added in a post on Instagram. “This is the kind of anti-Palestinian racism that’s acceptable for publication.”
The cartoon, which appeared on the Post’s website and in print editions Tuesday, echoed a controversial justification used by the Israeli government in its bombing of civilian infrastructure in Gaza. “Most senior Hamas political and military officials are hiding in the hospitals, especially the Shifa Hospital,” the Israeli army said in a recent statement, referring to the largest hospital in Gaza that has already been targeted in multiple Israeli strikes. (Hamas and Shifa staff have both denied claims that the hospital complex has been used by members of Hamas as a command center, according to the Associated Press.)
Israel’s latest assault on Gaza came in response to Hamas’s October 7 incursion targeting mostly civilians in southern Israel, resulting in 1,400 deaths and about 240 hostages, according to Israeli officials. Thus far, the Israeli army’s counteroffensive has resulted in the deaths of nearly 11,000 people, including roughly 4,400 children and 2,900 women, according to the territory’s health ministry. On Wednesday, a senior Biden administration official put the death toll at likely “higher than is being cited.”
Caleb Ecarma
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