Last Tuesday, the Washington Post ran a cartoon by two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Ramirez satirizing Hamas’s claims that Israel targets Gazan children, showing the terrorist group’s spokesman, Ghazi Hamadi, using kids as human shields. By Wednesday, after what executive editor Sally Buzbee called “deep concern” from staffers and letters written by subscribers, the Post pulled the cartoon, which many readers and employees reportedly saw as racist.
In an interview with National Review, Ramirez — who has a unique agreement whereby he publishes drawings in both the Washington Post and the Las Vegas Review-Journal (which, for its part, did not pull his drawing) — said he will not bow to the spurious charges of racism he has faced since the cartoon ran.
“This was designed with specificity. It’s focused on one individual and represents one organization and their claims of victimhood,” Ramirez told NR. He said those who considered the cartoon racist are engaged in conflation and “just can’t look beyond Hamas and distinguish the difference between a known terrorist group and Palestinians.”
