Last week, the head of the BBC, Richard Sharp, resigned from his position after an investigation revealed that he had failed to disclose some of his prior business dealings. The Guardian, a British newspaper, then published a grotesque cartoon of Sharp, who is Jewish, that appeared to include almost every standard element of anti-Semitic caricature. Following complaints, the newspaper—which has attracted substantial criticism over the years for its attitude toward Jews, and rarely misses an opportunity to slander Israel—removed the cartoon from its website, and published the following, by Dave Rich:
Centuries of anti-Jewish caricaturists have generated an extensive library of visual tropes to convey their hatred of, and disgust for, Jews. This is partly because anti-Semites face a challenge: how do you incite hatred against a group of people who are not always readily identifiable? Not every Jew wears religious clothing or “looks Jewish” to every beholder.
Rather than drawing a yellow star on each Jewish target, Nazi-style, artists down the ages have instead given their subjects stereotypically “Jewish” features. The outsized nose and lips, grotesque features, and sinister grin have been part of anti-Semitic imagery for centuries, a way of portraying Jews as repulsive and sinister. You can find them in medieval woodcuts of the fictitious allegation that Jews crucified Christian children and drained their blood (the ritual murder or “blood libel” charge), in Victorian cartoons in Punch and in the Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer.
[The cartoonist] says that Sharp’s Jewishness was not in his mind, but in a way that is beside the point. For centuries our world has taught us that this is how to imagine wealthy, powerful Jews, especially those accused of wrongdoing. The fact that his pen veered, however unthinkingly, towards these anti-Semitic motifs shows how easily, and unthinkingly, they can rise to the surface.
Read more on Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/may/01/richard-sharp-guardian-martin-rowson-cartoon-antisemitism