MEANWHILE, OVER AT THE GRAUNIAD: Guardian sacks their own cartoonist Steve Bell who had worked at the paper for over 40 years over ‘anti-Semitic’ Benjamin Netanyahu cartoon.

Steve Bell has this cartoon pulled by the Guardian tonight. pic.twitter.com/kUx4IlP9Om

— Political Cartoon (@Cartoon4sale) October 9, 2023

He has insisted it is a reference to a 1960s cartoon by David Levine, who drew US President Lyndon B. Johnson with a Vietnam shaped scar on his torso. The cartoon he submitted last week has the words ‘After David Levine’ written on it above the artist credit.

Writing on Twitter on Monday, October 9, Mr Bell claimed said he had submitted the artwork but it had been ‘spiked again’, before saying it was becoming ‘pretty nigh impossible to draw this subject [Israel] for the Guardian now without being accused of deploying “antisemitic tropes”‘.

He later suggested the cartoon didn’t make sense if it was a reference to the Shakespeare play, given Netanyahu is ‘wearing boxing gloves’.

Tonight a spokesman for the Guardian confirmed the newspaper would not be renewing his contract.

The artist claimed after filing it he received a phone call from the newspaper ‘with the strangely cryptic message “pound of flesh”.

Strange things happen at the Grauniad after a terrorist attack: After the 7/7 London tube bombings by radical Islamists in 2005, the paper ran a column written by a “trainee journalist” who used the word “sassy” in an article full of moral equivalence over the attacks:

Today’s Guardian gives space to Dilpazier Aslam, a “Guardian trainee journalist” who suggests that one shouldn’t be shocked by Thursday’s suicide bombings – such a reaction would be inappropriate because, among other reasons:

“Shocked would be to suggest that the bombings happened through no responsibility of our own.”

Yes, ladies and gentlemen – we bear responsibility for the murderous actions of maniacal members of a religious cult. An apology is certainly called for – the queue forms to the right.

Needless to say, there are other reasons why shock is inappropriate. Mr. Aslam explains:

“Shocked would be to say that we don’t understand how, in the green hills of Yorkshire, a group of men given all the liberties they could have wished for could do this.”

Fortunately for those who still don’t quite follow, Mr. Aslam provides an explanation immediately, in the very next paragraph – which reads, in its entirety:

“The Muslim community is no monolithic whole. Yet there are some common features. Second- and third-generation Muslims are without the don’t-rock-the boat attitude that restricted our forefathers. We’re much sassier with our opinions, not caring if the boat rocks or not.”

Suicide bombing …. sassy!

Aslam was sacked a couple of weeks later, after an intense campaign from both sides of the aisle.