The Toronto Sun has apologized for publishing a cartoon depicting Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky stealing a wallet from US President Joe Biden’s back pocket. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called the cartoon “anti-Semitic.”

Published on Wednesday, the cartoon showed Zelensky lifting the billfold from Biden’s trousers as the pair walked arm in arm. Drawn by American artist Gary Varvel, the cartoon was printed a week after Zelensky traveled to Washington to plead with lawmakers to pass a bill containing more than $60 billion in military aid for Ukraine.

Biden has spent recent months attempting to convince the Republican Party to drop its opposition to the bill, with no success. If passed, it would bring the total amount of military and economic aid allocated to Kiev by the US to more than $170 billion since February 2022.

The cartoon was condemned by Ukrainian activists, with Canada-Ukraine Foundation Director Yaroslav Baron accusing the newspaper of “insult[ing] Ukrainian dignity,” perpetuating “anti-Semitic stereotypes,” and advancing Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “propaganda efforts.” 

A US- and NATO-backed “foreign disinformation monitoring” platform complained about the cartoon, arguing that depictions of “the Ukrainian government as corrupt” are “false.” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau then weighed in, claiming that the cartoon’s depiction of a hook-nosed and greedy Zelensky promoted “the worst kind of anti-Semitism.” 

Three months ago, Trudeau and Zelensky took part in a standing ovation for a Ukrainian Nazi veteran at the Canadian parliament in Ottawa. Zelensky is Jewish.

Amid the pressure campaign, the Toronto Sun backed down. “The cartoon did not meet our editorial standards, we were wrong to run it and we apologize,”Editor-in-Chief Adrienne Batra wrote in an op-ed on Thursday. 

“It was hurtful to Canadians of Ukrainian origin, and to all Ukrainians, fighting an existential struggle against Russian aggression,” Bartra continued. “It was hurtful to Canadians of Jewish origin, and to the Jewish people, currently under assault from a global wave of anti-Semitism. We failed them and we failed all of you, our readers.”

Bartra also announced that the newspaper would no longer print the cartoonist’s work.

While the apology was hailed by pro-Ukrainian activists, some independent pundits condemned the newspaper’s about-turn. Journalist Glenn Greenwald called the apology “dumb and humiliating,” describing the cartoon as a “completely banal and common political cartoon showing Zelensky picking the pockets of Biden – because he's, you know, demanding billions more for Ukraine's war.”

https://www.rt.com/news/589543-zelensky-cartoon-apology-canada/

READ FROM TOP.

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW..............

More than 90 Palestinians, including 76 members of one extended family, have reportedly been killed in Israeli airstrikes that leveled two homes in Gaza, marking one of the deadliest bombardments in West Jerusalem’s campaign against Hamas.

Friday’s strike in Gaza City killed 16 heads of household from the al-Mughrabi family, local health and rescue officials said on Saturday. Among those who perished was a 56-year-old staff member with the UN Development Program (UNDP), Issam al-Mughrabi, as well as his wife and five children. He had worked for the agency for nearly three decades.

“The loss of Issam and his family has deeply affected us all,” UNDP administrator Achim Steiner said in a statement. “The UN and civilians in Gaza are not a target. This war must end. No more families should endure the pain and suffering that Issam's family and countless others are experiencing.”

More than 20,000 people have been killed and 53,000 wounded in the besieged Palestinian enclave since the Israel-Hamas war began on October 7, according to Gaza health authorities. Israel vowed to eliminate Hamas after the militant group triggered the conflict with cross-border attacks that killed more than 1,100 people, including nearly 700 Israeli civilians and 71 foreigners. Hamas fighters also took hundreds of hostages from southern Israeli villages back to Gaza.

The UN Security Council passed a resolution on Friday calling for aid deliveries to Gazan civilians to be sped up. The resolution was watered down after the US blocked an effort to demand an “urgent suspension of hostilities” in the conflict.

The UN warned in a report this week that more than 500,000 people in Gaza are starving amid Israel’s bombardment. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Friday that Israel’s military offensive was creating “massive obstacles” to the distribution of humanitarian aid.

About 85% of Gaza’s population has been displaced. Guterres said 136 UN agency staffers had been killed, “something we have never seen in UN history.” He has repeatedly called for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza, but Israeli officials have claimed that a cessation of hostilities would only help Hamas, which has ruled the enclave for the past 16 years.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has blamed Hamas for the high civilian casualties in Gaza, claiming the group’s fighters are operating from within and under civilian areas, schools and hospitals.

https://www.rt.com/news/589578-israel-airstrike-kills-76-gaza-family/

READ FROM TOP.

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW..................

BY LARRY GROSS

Apart from the death, destruction and suffering bestowed upon the Palestinian people in Gaza by the hands of the Israeli government, an ideological battle is taking place around the world, especially in the United States, where Jewish people face discrimination, prejudice and attacks on their identity by the hands of other Jews.

Former University of Pennsylvania—where former president Elizabeth Magill has just resigned because of this very issue—deputy dean Larry Gross and host Robert Scheer, “two old Jews,” as Scheer puts it, discuss the troubling, McCarthyite times that are transpiring now in the wake of the October 7th attacks and the subsequent daily bombardment of Gaza.

“It’s an attempt to silence opposition through a kind of rhetorical intimidation, and nobody should accept it. It is shameful and wrong and I would say it’s embarrassingly ignorant when the U.S. Congress votes for a resolution that defines criticism of Zionism as anti-Semitic,” Gross said.

The simple and objective realities that Jews like Gross and Scheer discuss could now be construed as anti-Semitic, despite them being Jewish. This “card,” Gross and Scheer argue, along with the “Holocaust card,” is illogical and stifles crucial dialogue. 

Gross says “it is intellectually bankrupt, morally reprehensible and politically opportunistic,” while Scheer pleads “this idea that the U.S. Congress could tell even Jewish people that if you dare criticize this political movement of Zionism that you’re anti-Semitic, this is one of the greatest distortions of thought.”

“They pull out their victim card and accuse anybody who criticizes them of anti-Semitism. And as you know, if you’re Jewish, then you’re a, what do they call it, self-hating Jew? That’s the kind of trick psychoanalysts play, which is you can’t win no matter what you say,” Gross said.

Despite their vast experience with both Judaism as a religion and Israel as a state, with Gross spending eight years growing up in Israel and Scheer reporting on the Six-Day War when it happened, their contributions to the discussion of the war on Gaza can now be labeled and disregarded, thanks to the efforts of people like Elise Stefanik against university presidents in Congress and the rest of the establishment figures who uncritically take Israeli government officials’ words as fact.

https://scheerpost.com/2023/12/21/netanyahus-palestinian-genocide-is-also-a-betrayal-of-the-jews/

READ FROM TOP.

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW..................