The Guardian says it will not renew the contract of cartoonist Steve Bell after the artist submitted a drawing of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu holding a scalpel to a Gaza-shaped scar on his stomach. Following an attack by the Palestinian militant group Hamas, Netanyahu ordered a full siege on Gaza, where 2.3 million people are without electricity and clean water, 1 million people were ordered to evacuate their homes, and thousands have been killed in the airstrikes that have destroyed entire neighborhoods, according to the region’s Health Ministry.
Bell wrote on the social media platform X that a few hours after he filed his cartoon, he received “an ominous phone call from the desk with the strangely cryptic message ‘pound of flesh.'” According to the artist, he said he did not understand and the voice on the phone added, “Jewish bloke, pound of flesh, antisemitic trope.”
The phrase refers to a plot line from Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice (1596–1598) in which the Jewish moneylender Shylock demands a “pound of flesh” from a Christian who can’t pay his debt. Scholars have long debated whether the caricatured depiction of Shylock, and the entire play, are antisemitic.
Bell, however, said that his cartoon was not inspired by the Shakespeare depiction. Instead, he said, he was referencing David Levine’s 1966 cartoon showing former president Lyndon B. Johnson lifting his shirt to reveal a scar in the shape of Vietnam. Levine’s work was based on a photograph taken that same year of the then-president showing the mark from a recent gallbladder surgery.
Bell has produced hundreds of cartoons about British and American politicians for the Guardian. He has been accused of antisemitic imagery for past published drawings, including a 2018 cartoon of Netanyahu and former British Prime Minister Theresa May sitting in front of a fireplace where Razan al-Najjar, the 21-year-old Palestinian medic who was shot by an Israeli sniper in 2018, stands with her headscarf in flames.
Bell has denied allegations that his drawings are antisemitic. In response to Hyperallergic’s request for comment, a Guardian spokesperson said, “Steve Bell’s cartoons have been an important part of the Guardian over the past 40 years — we thank him and wish him all the best.”
Bell has not yet replied to Hyperallergic’s inquiry.
