A cartoon in an Australian newspaper appearing to suggest that calls for a public inquiry into the Bondi Beach massacre is a political stunt run by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has been condemned as nothing but "unadulterated... Jew-hatred".
The cartoon, called “Grass roots”, drawn by left-wing cartoonist Cathy Wilcox and featured in the Sydney Morning Herald as well as The Age, shows campaigners calling for the inquiry held up on a bed of grass by political and media figures, all marching to the beat of a drum played by Netanyahu.
Arsen Ostrovsky, a human rights lawyer shot in the head during the massacre, said: "[It is] hard to see this as anything but an unadulterated form of Jew-hatred. The calls for a royal commission into antisemitism have enormous support from the entire community.”
The Zionist Federation of Australia posted on X: "The cartoon could have been published in Der Stürmer, a pro-Nazi German newspaper that called for the extermination of Jews as early as 1933.
“Senior people at [9News, the papers’ parent company] have some very serious questions to answer.”
Many notable figures have backed the campaign for the public inquiry, as well as the families of those who died in the attack.
Alex Ryvchin, the CEO of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, wrote: "The Olympic athletes, the captains of industry, our top jurists, the families of the dead and the majority of ordinary Australians who favour a royal commission into a terrorist slaughter of Jews at a family fair at a beach are all just mindless drones too stupid to realise they’re doing the bidding of the Libs and the Murdoch press.
"But the enlightened cartoonist alone sees the truth. We were slaughtered because of Israel and any deviation from this belief makes you a stooge of the Zionists."
David Ossip, the president of the New South Wales (NSW) Board of Jewish Deputies, said: “Particularly after Bondi, how is the board of 9News allowing their publications to become a platform for the promotion of vile anti-Semitic tropes?”
Wilcox has previously said in an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald: “While I don’t have the same obligation as a journalist to be ‘factual’ - to have all the names and figures to hand - my cartoons need to be founded in truth.
“It might be what I think lies beneath the political spin, or stretching someone’s proposition to its logical extreme to expose an absurdity, but if it doesn’t ring true, it probably fails as a cartoon.”
Since the cartoon was published, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has since announced a royal commission will take place, a move welcomed by Jewish leaders.
Wilcox and 9News have both been contacted for comment.
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