See March 6, 2025 update below.
Earlier this week, at least two local news outlets of which CAMERA is aware ran a syndicated cartoon by Jeff Danziger that trivialized the plight of Israeli hostages and promoted antisemitic tropes of Israeli bloodlust.
The Palm Beach Post (Florida) and the Rutland Herald (Vermont) both featured a cartoon depicting one of the female hostages released after over fifteen months in Hamas captivity, stepping over a bloody pile of Palestinian bodies, labeled “over 40 thousand Palestinians killed,” with Israeli soldiers telling her, “watch your step.” The clear message of the post is that Israelis do not care about the Palestinian death toll in their bloodthirsty quest to obtain the retrieval of a minimal number of hostages of dubious value. The reality, of course, is the opposite.
The first and most important response to Danziger and those who publish his vile image is that Hamas never should have taken the Israeli hostages to begin with, and the Israeli government was entirely justified in taking action to retrieve them. The second point they miss is that Hamas could have released the hostages unconditionally at any time. Had the terror group released the hostages and surrendered, it could have saved countless Palestinian and Israeli lives.
Of course, the claim of 40,000 Palestinians killed is also a brazen distortion. About half of those are combatants, and a recent report from the Henry Jackson Society, a British think tank, found that Hamas-reported casualty figures included about 5,000 natural deaths, included people killed by misfired Hamas rockets, and included people who died before the war even began.
Moreover, Israel has offered a five million dollar reward and safe passage out of Gaza to any Palestinian, as well as his family, who would have returned a hostage. Some of those hostages have been held in homes, hospitals, and UNRWA facilities.
Contrary to the cartoon’s characterization of the war as “merciless,” Israel “has taken precautionary measures even the United States did not do during its recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan” to protect Palestinian civilians, according to John Spencer, Chair of Urban Warfare Studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point. But for Danziger and those who publish his obscene cartoon, that is not enough. For them, it seems, Israel should have passively accepted having its citizens taken hostage – an untenable position that would not have been expected of any other government.
UPDATE: The editor who approved publication of the cartoon has been relieved of his responsibilities. On March 2, Stet News, another Palm Beach local outlet, reported:
The owners of The Palm Beach Post fired Editorial Page Editor Tony Doris last month after the paper published a syndicated cartoon condemned as antisemitic. … Doris said he was told he had been fired for violating Gannett guidelines and standards.