This is “journalism” today: just hard-Left propaganda, and as the Left is increasingly open about its antisemitism, so is the establishment media.
“CNN runs cartoon depicting Passover seder amid a sea of blood,” by David Litman, CAMERA, January 27, 2023:
If CNN needs to flirt with antisemitic tropes in order to report on controversial Israeli minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, what does that say about the network?
In an article dated January 25, 2023 titled “As Israel bans Palestinian flags, one artist protests with his brush,” CNN’s Abeer Salman seemed to go out of her way to not just include ahistorical swipes at the Jewish state, but also – in borrowing from centuries of antisemitic blood libels – associate the holiday of Passover with Jews benefiting from the shedding of blood of non-Jews.
The focus of the article is a portrait by the largely unknown, far-left Israeli cartoonist Michael Rozanov – who goes by “Mysh” – that portrays Ben-Gvir in the colors of the Palestinian flag. The portrait followed Ben-Gvir’s controversial decision to order police to remove Palestinian flags from public spaces.
Such is Mysh’s significance and the attention that his Ben-Gvir portrait drew that “dozens” of Israel’s 9.3 million citizens also asked him to draw their portraits in the colors. Meanwhile, Ben-Gvir’s decision was widely criticized by much of the rest of Israeli society, including editorials in national newspapers.
However, CNN and Salman did not limit themselves to publishing a puff piece on a far-left cartoonist lampooning a controversial minister. Instead, they inexplicably included a cartoon recalling multiple antisemitic themes, as well as unchallenged, ahistorical commentary depicting Israelis as needlessly cruel.
Of all Mysh’s other cartoons, Salman chose to highlight one that depicts a Jewish family celebrating Passover surrounded by a sea of blood. The imagery echoes multiple antisemitic themes and conspiracy theories. For one, it flirts with the ancient blood libel that Jews use the blood of non-Jews during Passover to bake matzah. For another, it plays on themes of Jews accruing benefits at the expense of the blood and freedom of others. Aside from being a vacuous viewpoint of the conflict, it plays into the countless conspiracies of Jews manipulating the world for their own selfish benefit.
Giving Mysh the benefit of the doubt, that perhaps his work is simply being misinterpreted, becomes less tenable the more one investigates the rest of his work, however. And while Salman included background on Mysh in her story, she seems to have been curiously incurious about glancing through his easily accessible and publicly available portfolio of cartoons.
For example, another cartoon explicitly used the antisemitic Passover blood libel, depicting Palestinians being crushed to death between two pieces of matzah as blood pours out….
