Guardian Cartoonist Steve Bell sacked after 40 years following submission of comic depicting Netanyahu preparing to cut the Gaza strip from his own belly.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F8Bk1UEXQAATKvE?format=jpg&name=small

The accusation is that the comic alludes to Shylock from Shakesepear's Merchant of Venice, a character who demands a pound of flesh as the collateral for a loan and is considered by some a negative stereotype of Jewish greed.

This is troubling on many levels.

Firstly Bell has stated the comic is alluding to David Levine's cartoon of President Lyndon Johnson, in which LBJ bears the scar of Vietnam, showing how it tarnished his reputation and was something that he would carry with him the rest of his life. This is a very relevant allusion as it shows the damage that is done to Netanyahu's reputation every time Israel takes disproportionate military action against the Gazan population. https://hti.osu.edu/opper/lesson-plans/cold-war-conflict-in-vietnam-the-vietnam-era-presidency/images/johnsons-scar

Second to say that any depiction of a Jewish person about to do surgery is an allusion to Shylock is a stretch. The allusion here is instead to the idea of "surgical strikes" which Israel claims it is using to take out Hamas assets, while in reality they are destroying wide swathes of civilian infrastructure, homes, and lives. Doing surgery in boxing gloves would result in imprecise cuts and wide margins.

Also, even if it was an allusion to The Merchant of Venice, the historical context of that play would be relevant not as a stereotype but as a historical allusion. The play itself is equally a criticism of the fact that the Jewish people of that era had been forced into money lending because they were banned from most other work by the Christian guild system and the Venitian royal decree. Shylocks insistence on recovering the "Pound of Flesh" is not a simple greedy reaction, but rather is a protest and backlash against the system of oppression that traps him and his people on a position where all they can do is fill the money lending role that the Christians condemn as sinful usury, yet the Christians themselves will go so far as to collateralized their own flesh to feed their desire for credit beyond their means. Yes a character like Shylock can be caricatured as a "Greedy Jew" stereotype, but that is a misuse of a nuanced character.

And anyhow, what would Netanyahu be greedy for in this cartoon? Is he paying the pound of flesh to himself?