BERLIN (JTA) — A cartoon in a major German daily purportedly showing Israel as a greedy Moloch set off a firestorm of protest despite an apology by the newspaper.
Artist Ernst Kahl said he was shocked to learn that Sueddeutsche Zeitung used his drawing of a greenish, horned monster being served breakfast in bed by a pale, plump maid to illustrate a review of two new books on Israel, according to German news reports.
The drawing had been created for the German gourmet magazine Der Feinschmecker.
Moloch is defined as something possessing the power to exact severe sacrifice and has been used derogatorily.
Heiko Flottau’s review, with the headline “The Decline of Liberal Zionism,” dealt with American author Peter Beinart’s book, whose title in German translates to “The American Jews and Israel. What is going wrong,” and German TV journalist Werner Sonne’s book “Raison d’état? Germany’s Liability for Israel’s Security.” The article appeared in the paper’s July 2 edition.
Under the illustration, the caption reads, “Germany at your service. For decades, Israel has been provided with weapons, partly free of charge. Israel’s enemies consider the country to be a voracious Moloch. Peter Beinert regrets that it’s gotten this far.”
One day after the article came out, editor Franziska Augstein issued a statement that “the publication of the illustration in this context was a mistake.”
Deidre Berger, head of the Germany office of the American Jewish Committee, lodged a complaint with the German Press Council over the pairing of the article with the drawing, and Israel’s ambassador to Germany, Yakov Hadas-Handelsman protested in a letter to the paper’s editor in chief, Kurt Kister.
Dieter Graumann, head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, decried the use of the image. Likewise, Jewish columnist Henryk Broder, in his commentary in the German daily newspaper Die Welt, compared the drawing to the infamous Sturmer caricatures published by rabid anti-Semite Julius Streicher during the Third Reich.
Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, blasted the illustration in a comment to The Jerusalem Post.
Meanwhile, Kahl told Germany’s main Jewish weekly, the Judische Allgemeine, that the illustration was among his drawings that had been available for use by the Sueddeutsche Zeitung. But he said he wished the Sueddeutsche editors had asked him before using it in this context.
“I would have absolutely said no,” he told the Allgemeine.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
