Washington Post takes down cartoon showing the truth about Hamas after readers complain it is racist

The Washington Post is apologizing for publishing an anti-Hamas cartoon that some readers complained was offensive and racist.

On Wednesday, the newspaper published a cartoon drawn by Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Michael Ramirez depicting a Hamas spokesman with an Arab mother and children literally tied to his body.

A speech blurb connected to the Hamas official reads, "How dare Israel attack civilians."

The point is obvious and profoundly true: Hamas uses Palestinian civilians as human shields but blames Israel when civilians are caught in the crossfire of a war that Hamas started. The terrorist group, moreover, physically blocks those civilians from fleeing for safety because, as the cartoon demonstrates, civilian deaths help Hamas in the global court of public opinion.

The truth be damned, readers of the Washington Post were outraged over the cartoon.

One reader complained the cartoon uses "racial stereotypes" that are "offensive and disturbing," which perpetuate "racism and gender bias, which is wholly unacceptable." Another reader actually complained that "laying the deaths of Palestinian civilians at the feet of Hamas instead of the people actually killing them is a gross mischaracterization."

Yet another reader complained it is not "informative, helpful or thought-provoking to look at this conflict through the glasses of 19th-century colonialists."

In response, the Washington Post — whose slogan is "democracy dies in darkness" — cast a long, dark shadow over the truth and unpublished the cartoon.

David Shipley, opinion editor at the newspaper, said in an apology that he "saw the drawing as a caricature of a specific individual, the Hamas spokesperson who celebrated the attacks on unarmed civilians in Israel," but admitted "the reaction to the image convinced me that I had missed something profound, and divisive."

"I regret that," Shipley said, explaining he took down the cartoon because it violates the paper's values.

Then, without a single acknowledgment of irony, Shipley pledged to "continue to make the [opinion] section home to a range of views and perspectives, including ones that challenge readers."

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal obtained internal company messages that showed one staffer celebrating Shipley bending his knee to the outrage mob. That staffer, who works on the Post's opinion desk, said Shipley "felt the pressure and reacted."

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