In a Facebook post about Saturday’s synagogue shooting in Poway, Calif., Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan claimed the shooter had been influenced by a blatantly anti-Semitic cartoon that appeared last week in The New York Times.
Erdan wrote that anti-Semitism in political cartoons extended beyond the pages of newspapers and turned into the “blood of Jews” being spilled in synagogues or other places “identified as Jewish.”
“The loathsome terrorist who carried out the murderous act in the California synagogue and killed […] Lori Gilbert-Kaye was inspired to kill by the same anti-Semitic motives [behind] the cartoon published in The New York Times—[accusations] that the Jews run the world, that the prime minister of Israel runs the world. The Israeli prime minister is portrayed as a guide dog leading a blind man. How much hatred and incitement that illustration contains,” he wrote.
“So people are saying that the newspaper supposedly apologized and that the cartoon’s publication was an ‘error in judgment.’ … You wouldn’t accept such a limp-wristed condemnation of racism and incitement if it were directed at any other minority,” continued Erdan.
This article originally appeared on Israel Hayom.