Rupert Murdoch Apologizes For “Grotesque, Offensive Cartoon”

The Sunday Times’ damage control continues. The paper’s owner, Rupert Murdoch tweeted an apology for Gerald Scarfe’s Holocaust Memorial Day cartoon.

Israeli officials voiced their displeasure with the Times, with one even hinting at punitive measures I happen to disagree with. The Times of Israel writes:

Earlier on Monday, Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs Minister Yuli Edelstein told Army Radio that the government would probably refrain from filing an official complaint with the London-based paper. However, he said, “We will think about how to act against the paper’s representative here in Israel.”

As the story spread through Western papers, the disproportionate reach of Haaretz‘s contrarian views caught our eye as well, noted in AFP, Al Arabiya, and Sky News coverage. The latter wrote:

But, writing in the left-leaning Haaretz newspaper, commentator Anshel Pfeffer criticised condemnation of the cartoon, which he said ‘was not anti-Semitic by any standard.’

He noted the cartoon included no Jewish or Holocaust imagery, was as biting as the cartoonist’s usual treatment of non-Jewish subjects and was not similar to traditional ‘blood libel’ cartoons.