Man Bites Dog
Oh, there has to be a Yiddish aphorism.
My mom had one “The end of a thief is a rope.”
My dad had another. “Fun a khazershn ek ken men keyn shtrayml nit makn” or “You can’t make a shtreimel out of a pig’s tail.”. (It ropes in Torah, history, hyperbole, irony even fashion!)
The New York Times bit a dog.
A dachshund, to be exact.
Two days ago, it published a vile cartoon by Portuguese cartoonist, Antonio Antunes Moreira in its international edition in which a blind, kippa wearing Trump is led by a dachshund Netanyahu sporting a Magen David on a collar (in case you didn’t it get.)
Shock reverberated among thinking people across the globe.
The NYT fumbled its first response and said the cartoon was an “error in judgment”. In a later statement, it coughed up the word “apology.”
No mention was made about whether sanctions against the editor who approved publication of the cartoon or the man who drew it, would be imposed.
Why was this particular image so disturbing?
After all, NYT’s anti-Israel/anti-Jewish bias is well known.
It supported the Iran Deal and sicced its thrice Pulitzer Prize winning columnist Thomas Friedman on Netanyahu when he spoke in opposition to it at the United Nations and Congress.
Friedman, in his February 4, 2015 essay called Netanyahu 17 “baad names” including “churlish” repeated twice. (https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/04/opinion/thomas-friedman-a-bad-mistake.html?_r=0)
(Everything Netanyahu predicted about the Iran Deal came true, except for the 2016 $1.7 billion in foreign currency that Obama secretly sent to Iran. Netanyahu didn’t see that coming.)
The cartoon, to NYT’s consternation completely ripped away any curtain it thought it had drawn shielding its intense hatred of Netanyahu and Israel.
1. It was an insult to Israelis who voted for the parties that would keep the Prime Minister in office as well as the 63 million American Trump voters.
2. It had a subliminal message. A dachshund is a German dog, ergo: Netanyahu is a Nazi.
3. It was a dog whistle (pun intended) to those who detest dogs, i..e, Islamic fundamentalist terrorists.
4. It was reminiscent of one of the worst anti-Semitic canards, i.e., that Jews control the world. The cartoon portrayed a Netanyahu-hund controlling the unseeing president of the most powerful nation on earth
Hopefully, this outrage will finally and irretrievably lay any remaining faith in The New York Times’ credibility, to rest.
