A taxpayer-funded cartoon festival that received nearly a quarter of a million pounds from Arts Council England last year is hosting a Jordanian illustrator accused of producing antisemitic imagery, the JC can reveal.
The Lakes International Comic Arts Festival (LICAF), which received £242,143 of Arts Council cash last year, is hosting Emad Hajjaj, a cartoonist who has repeatedly compared Israelis soldiers to Nazis.
The Community Security Trust (CST) said it was “deeply concerned” that LICAF had programmed an artist whose work has “included antisemitic themes”.
CST added that the Arts Council’s “continued failure to apply proper scrutiny risks normalising antisemitism within the cultural sector at a time when anti-Jewish hatred is already at high levels.”
The controversy follows the festival’s decision in 2024 to invite Palestinian cartoonist Mohammad Sabaaneh, whose past work included depictions of Israel as a tentacled monster controlling the world and a Jew nailing Christ to the cross.
It also comes after the Prime Minister urged Arts Council England to “withdraw and claw back funding” in cases where public money is used to platform antisemitism.
A series of satirical cartoons by Hajjaj, whose work has been published in Charlie Hebdo and who was previously arrested for his drawings of Emirati leadership, draw parallels between Gaza and Auschwitz, with several works reimagining the sign above the gates of the Nazi death camp.
In one cartoon, Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu hold a sign reading “Gaza takeover plan” while a helicopter drops part of an SS guard station and watch tower into the Strip. Another shows a sign reading “stabbing attempt”, with an IDF guard smiling nearby.
A separate cartoon shows Gaza from above, with the letters formed from long barracks resembling concentration camp buildings.
Another contrasts Anne Frank with a Palestinian girl named Amna Mufti, stating that Anne will be “always remembered”, while asking of Amna: “will she be ever remembered?”
Another cartoon shows Netanyahu stretching a map of “greater Israel” across the Arab world. Elsewhere, the Israeli prime minister is depicted carrying two guns with the Torah hoisted between them.
A cartoon by Emad Hajjaj[Missing Credit]
In a 2009 cartoon titled “Jerusalem is Arab”, the Dome of the Rock is depicted as a weeping Muslim woman while a Jewish man in the foreground raises a Torah scroll. Similar imagery reappeared in 2021, with menorah-like objects circling the woman’s head.
A 2015 cartoon titled “The city of Jerusalem is closed today” depicts a tank bearing a Magen David positioned beside a church and mosque, both shown damaged by bullets.
The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting described the cartoons as examples of “Jewish erasure”.
The row over Hajjaj’s work comes two years after LICAF was criticised for planning to platform an artist accused of antisemitism.
At the time, Peter Kessler, the former chair of the LICAF board, became a whistleblower after raising concerns over the festival’s decision to programme Sabaaneh.
In 2024, he complained internally to LICAF founder and director Julie Tait, who defended the invitation from the Lake District festival and told Kessler that the cartoons were not antisemitic.
The former longtime board member has now accused LICAF of adding “fuel on the fire of hatred against Jews” and criticised the festival, which is a registered charity, for becoming “an almost single-issue organisation, funding Palestinian events, and publishing Palestinian books”.
Another cartoon directly contrasts Anne Frank with a Palestinian girl (Emad Hajjaj)[Missing Credit]
The festival denies this – and said no money from the Arts Council had been used to fund Hajjaj’s visit.
The festival, which takes place from October 2-4, devotes a substantial section of its website to Palestinian cartoonists and sells a book describing how “Zionist gangs” forcibly evicted thousands of Palestinians during the Nakba.
In a letter to ACE chief executive Darren Henley, Kessler urged him to “halt to this dangerous crusade” of pro-Palestinian activism at LICAF, which he claimed had “descended into the oldest of hatreds”.
The dispute comes after Sir Keir Starmer told an antisemitism summit convened following the Golders Green stabbings that the government was auditing how allegations of anti-Jewish hatred were handled within the arts sector.
Starmer said: “Where public funding is being used to promote or platform antisemitism, the Arts Council must act, using its powers to suspend, withdraw and claw back funding.”
An ACE spokesperson said it was reviewing a complaint about LICAF.
"Antisemitism is abhorrent and has no place in the organisations that we fund. Last week we received a complaint regarding this upcoming event, and we will be following our ‘Raising a Concern’ process to review the matter fully,” the spokesperson said.
Darren Henley said: “Antisemitism is abhorrent and there is no place for it in Arts Council funded organisations… we welcome any intervention that helps ensure our processes are robust and effective in addressing complaints about antisemitism.”
Responding the JC, LICAF said: “LICAF abhors all forms of racism whilst centring the principles of freedom of expression and standing firm against censorship. We feature the best comic art, including political cartooning, from around the world in our festival including work by Jewish artists and writers. We have never featured antisemitic cartoons or comic art at our festival and will never do so this year or in future years.
“Our festival features work from around 25 countries each year. Our programme of Middle Eastern cartoonists amounts to around 1.5 per cent of our festival programme. I believe the complainant has not attended our festival for a number of years so may not be aware of this fact.
"Our wider programme of Palestinian work does not feature any anti-semitic work or views and always focuses on facts rather than opinions. Our year-round programme of work is rich and varied and includes research into comics and literacy and enjoyment of reading for children, touring exhibitions to libraries across England, creator development programmes and more. Our programme covers the widest range of issues however we don't choose guests based on issues but, rather, on their standing in the comics and cartooning world. We are certainly not a single-issue organisation - far from it.
“Emad Hajjaj is a past victim of judicial harassment, detained and prosecuted for his cartooning of Emirati leadership, and is an internationally-published, popular and well-regarded veteran political cartoonist. He is invited as per the above criteria ie as a highly-regarded global cartoonist. Emad Hajjaj's attendance is funded by a separate organisation, not by LICAF nor Arts Council England. He will be launching a new anthology of comics by young Jordanian comics creators about disability in Jordan at LICAF 2026.”
Hajjaj was approached for comment.
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