Steve Bell sacked by the Guardian
JVL Introduction
Steve Bell has revealed that the Guardian has effectively sacked him over a cartoon of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in boxing gloves, preparing to operate on his own torso, where an outline shape of the Gaza Strip could be seen (see below).
It pays homage to David Levine’s cartoon from the 1960s (also reproduced below) of US president Lyndon Johnston with a Vietnam-shaped scar on his belly.
The Guardian has chosen to read into it a pound-of-flesh allegory which does take a certain stretch of the imagination. But then “tropes” can be manipulated like that as weapons of censorship, which has happened to Steve Bell before.
Your web editor extends his solidarity and support to Bell, with huge appreciation for his life’s work of critical comment, now abruptly interrupted by a newspaper that has gained so much respect from its association with him over the decades.
RK
This article was originally published by the Morning Star on Sat 14 Oct 2023. Read the original here.
Cartoonist sacked by Guardian over 'anti-semitic' work
Just to explain. I filed this cartoon around 11am, possibly my earliest ever. Four hours later, on a train to Liverpool I received an ominous phone call from the desk with the strangely cryptic message "pound of flesh"… pic.twitter.com/kSfmfzlmhy
— Steve Bell (@BellBelltoons) October 9, 2023
CARTOONIST Steve Bell has effectively been sacked by the Guardian newspaper for an alleged “anti-semitic” work, he has revealed to the Morning Star.
Mr Bell, who had worked for the publication for 42 years, said that the decision had been “a bit of a shock.”
Earlier this week, he revealed that the Guardian refused to publish an image over concerns about “anti-semitic tropes.”
The cartoon was of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in boxing gloves, preparing to operate on his own torso, where an outline shape of the Gaza Strip could be seen.
The caption read: “Residents of Gaza, get out now.”
Mr Bell’s drawing refers to a cartoon by David Levine from the 1960s picturing then-US president Lyndon Johnston with a scar on his belly shaped like the map of Vietnam.
Levine created a powerful image of President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1966 by alluding to an almost trivial incident: Johnson exposing the scar on his belly from a recent gall bladder operation. But Mr. Levine turned the scar into a defining physical characteristic of the man. He also turned it into his defining political characteristic because the scar was an outline of a map of Vietnam. The caricature was accurate to the point of prophecy: it showed the wound that was to bring down the president. Source: http://www.samuel-beckett.net/Levine_LBJ.html
But critics have condemned the drawing, interpreting it as a reference to the “pound of flesh” demanded by the vengeful Jewish father character in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice.
While the Guardian declined to comment, Mr Bell defended his work on Twitter, writing: “I filed this cartoon around 11am, possibly my earliest ever.
“Four hours later, on a train to Liverpool, I received an ominous phone call from the desk with the strangely cryptic message ‘pound of flesh’…”
He added that he told the desk that he did not understand, and agreed with a Twitter user who said that the Shakespeare reference would not work in the political context of Israel.
Mr Bell argued that a key part of the image was Mr Netanyahu “wearing boxing gloves.”
Speaking to the Morning Star, Mr Bell said that the Guardian has “a new process of vetting content, even for undrawn cartoons, that has come in recently.
“It’s getting more and more impossible to safeguard the freedom you need to be a cartoonist,” he said. “I’ve worked on this paper for 42 years and these kinds of problems have only come up recently.
“I used to do three editorial cartoons a week. They have cut it right back to three a month, and [now] they got rid of it completely.
“I’d have been happy drawing if [I could] for the rest of my life.”
Mr Bell said the decision was devastating, adding: “They said they won’t publish anything more of mine even though I am on the books until April 2024.”
It was only a matter of time for a rare genius.
Once again we are in the Alice Through the Looking Glass world where no Jew can be seen as doing anything bad in the same way as anyone else as it’s a trope. This is of course othering Jews and is antisemitic!
Coming soon: Bernie Madoff, a misguided person and not the perpetrator of the world’s biggest Ponzi scheme.
So sorry, Steve.
Something’s gone very badly and extensively wrong with the journalistic and editorial standards of the “Guardian” in recent years I think.
The Guardian has continued to go downhill and probably never recovered from the then government’s reported threat to close it down after the Snowden and Wikileaks revelations. It seems to have been cowering ever since in ways that parallel Labour since Corbyn was ousted. Bell has been one of its greatest assets for decades and the paper’s shabby treatment of him now is disgraceful. I saw the cartoon before I read what the editors projected into it and that interpretation hadn’t even crossed my mind. People have to be really antisemitic, if subconsciously so, to see antisemitism where it doesn’t exist. I hope some paper snaps up Bell asap! Hat-tip Steve B!
It is clear that people see what they want to see. Steve Bell was one of the very few remaining in the Guardian that I have any respect for Dont hold your breath waiting for any solidarity action from journalists there
But the whole point with Shylock was that he was demanding a pound of flesh from someone else’s body – not cutting it from his own. You would think that the Guardian would know that.
Steve Bell’s work is really good. Shame on the Guardian.
Instructive and terrifying how the Right are willing to link anything and everything to an invented transgression, imagined in order to be weaponised to serve their political agenda …. they are utterly ruthless …. Steve is simply their latest example …. it’s how they do
We held a demonstration some 2 years ago outside the Guardian over its silence over the extradition proceedings in respect of Julian Assange. I remember speaking into a loudspeaker that Stephen Bell was the only journalist left on the Guardian and they had gone and sacked him. Clearly I was premature.
Steve Bell is a legend in his lifetime. This is not the first time that the Guardian has seen ‘antisemitism’ in his cartoons by imagining something Bell himself hadn’t. The ‘pound of flesh’ inference can only be sustained by saying that any showing of flesh by anyone who is Jewish is a reference to Shylock’s pound of flesh. Totally absurd as the context is entirely different.
It seems that the Guardian and its editor Katherine Viner are still running with the false anti-semitism smears
Steve Bell’s cartoon is antisemitic, according to the new definition of this term ie anything critical of Benjamin Netanyahu or the right wing Israeli Government.
Steve Bell is one of the most brilliant, innovative and inventive cartoonists of our time, a direct link to the great visual satirists of the 18th and19th centuries.
It’s the Guardians loss.
Steve Bell and the always guaranteed to be off his rocker, Simon Tisdall, have been the only reasons to check out the Guardian for yonks. They both present a very English form of satire at it’s best, one knowingly, and the other knowing nothing of any consequence and taking it to heights of even greater hilarity.
This stupid newspaper has just blown its own foot off. The last shred of credibility they had left has been cast out for being its conscience. When even the fool can’t criticise the king, you know his kingdom won’t end well!
I saw Steve Bell’s cartoon as illustrating Netanyahu, about to commit a grave act of self-harm.
I don’t know where this ‘pound of flesh’ interpretation came from, but I suspect a certain amount of hysteria was involved.
By the way, that’s the second cartoonist The Guardian have hobbled – or knobbled – whichever way you look at it.
Martin Rowson served his penance for the cartoon of that BBC guy(can’t remember his name) and is back, a shadow of his former self.
After this, he may like to reconsider.
Come on, Rowson! Join the rest of us. Solidarity, with Steve Bell!
As for myself, I’ve, unsubscribed from The Guardian’s daily email. I shall, just, have to buy Felicity Cloake’s books, from now on.
Welcome to the new McCarthyism! Hardly unexpected of The Guardian, which led the charge against Corbyn. Witchhunts of this kind will get worse under Starmer.
Since Viner took over the Guardian has taken a seriously downward turn. The paper has shed so many wonderful journalists, leaving itself with decreasingly little to say or offer. Hopefully the brilliant Steve Bell will soon be working again, at a more open outlet. Until then his genius will be missed.
Steve Bell. One of the few cartoonists to have made me spit out my breakfast on numerous occasions. As the right-wing moves into gear and suppresses ‘dissent’, [see: ‘Prevent’ {government ‘anti-radicalisation’ programme which cites ‘socialism’ & ‘communism’ as ‘problematic’}], in each, low, surreptitious and incremental way, trying to undo the inevitable slide into Fascism becomes both more difficult and indeed, dangerous. Once, we may have relied on the fact that certain ‘brave’ publications and individuals would stand up against this pernicious, prevailing narrative, but it seems The Guardian’s slide into establishment shill is complete. Please, keep your voices loud…
Will be cancelling my subscription to the guardian
The Guardian is now a full member of the gov D Notice system. It gets told what it can and can’t publish. Previous editor always refused. Hence the change to fashion, celebs, cooking, travel and safe politics under this editor.
It’s claims to be independent are an untruth. Ml5 tells them to jump and they reply ‘how high?’
The current editor of The Guardian should be replaced with Steve Bell reinstated. My decades of readership is at an end now, with creeping subservience, culminating with this sacking, undermining the founding principles of CP Scott.
I am very familiar with Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice and have written on it but pound of flesh never occurred to me in looking at Steve Bell’s cartoon.
What did occur to me was that Israel speaks of precision bombing and ‘surgical’ frequently occurs in discussion of Israel’s tactics — especially in regard to bombing Gaza.
Netanyahu’s boxing gloves suggest not only his combative approach but also the inability to wield the scalpel he holds in any surgical manner. The point is he wants to eliminate Hamas, here presented simply as Gaza, but has no possibility of doing it as he intends, .
weaponising antisemitism again. Unfair dismissal, no discussion, no notice.
The Guardian went downhill right from the get go when it was a Confederate supporting newspaper, and then later on pivoted to being a liberal middle/upper class sanctimonious rag.
I’ve cancelled my Guardian subscription and told them why. I imagine there is indeed an ironic reference to the pound of flesh and blood libel tropes, but the point I take is that Netanyahu is inflicting them on his own body politic by “surgical strikes” that are anything but.
Sadly, The Guardian has become deliberately factional since the editor was changed some years ago. It has lost touch with objective and clinical journalism. It was always left-leaning, but did have objective balance, and was not afraid to risk ‘offending’ powerful vested interest groups when felt necessary in the pursuit of independent objective, and responsible journalism. The rapid decline was clearly visible in the illogical reporting,and comment upon, the so-called ‘anti-semitism’ of Corbyn and other left wingers in the Labour Party. So, I am afraid, no surprise here. I am familiar with The Merchant of Venice although the Guardian does not appear to be so. The cartoon seems to be about the Israeli Government engaging in self-harm, whereas the ‘pound of flesh’ was to be exacted from a third party in the play. What a dreadful condition our politics and journalism, in tandem, have deteriorated to.
The Guardian now guards the extreme Right Wing of politics! I have never forgiven this paper for doing everything it did to crush a decent politician by not showing the thousands who went to hear him speak!
It was like the BBC, silencing any mention or photo of Jeremy Corbyn when the Guardian should have been printing & cheering for our chance of freedom from corruption & Cronyism!
The Guardian has become the guard at the door preventing freedom of speech ! This attack on Steve Bell proves how weak the boss of this paper really is she lacks integrity & should move to the Daily fail or the Sun another useless arsewipe paper Excuse my language!
Steve Bell showed more integrity in his political cartoons & a clear picture of the world leaders today a bunch of aggressive hypocrites far too ready to jump & protect their Israel & its spyware & weapons & military power right in the Middle of the Middle East that they pour billions of dollars to!
The Guardian has lost its to courage to stand up & defend justice instead it pretends to.
Well done Steve Bell for being outrageous & wonderfully truthful…
I have , with reading of Steve Bells sacking from the Guardian , which I read as their censorship , withdrawn my subscription to The Guardian . I believed The Guardian still offered a true reflection of news from around the World as well as from this dreadful UK we are existing in . I almost forgave not forgot them turning on the most honest politician I ever knew but censorship , especially when they are proved so wrong , is a step too far .
Goodbye Guardian