Cartoonist: Wash Post's Removal of Work Blow to Free Speech

Leftist Radicals have no sense of humor?

Two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist Michael Ramirez, whose work appears in The Washington Post, said Friday the newspaper's decision to remove his latest cartoon over cries that it was racist is "a blow against ... the freedom of speech."

The cartoon featured a caricature of a Hamas spokesman with three children and a woman tied to him by rope and a baby tied to his head. He is standing next to the Palestinian flag on one side and a portrait of a bearded man and a mosque on the other. In a text bubble, he says, "HOW DARE ISRAEL ATTACK CIVILIANS."

The cartoon appears to reflect accusations that Hamas terrorists, who carried out an attack Oct. 7 in southern Israel that massacred more than 1,400 Israelis, use civilians as human shields.

According to an editor's note Thursday by David Shipley, the Post's opinion editor, Shipley initially approved the cartoon for publication, but he wrote "It was seen by many readers as racist. This was not my intent. I saw the drawing as a caricature of a specific individual, the Hamas spokesperson who celebrated the attacks on unarmed civilians in Israel."

"When the intellectually indolent try to defend the indefensible, they always seem to resort to playing the race card," Ramirez said in an interview with The Washington Free Beacon. "They're trying to claim that this caricature is a racial exercise, when in its specificity, it is Ghazi Hamad, who is a senior Hamas official, who went on Lebanese television praising the brutal Oct. 7 attack and systematic slaughter of women, children, and men, and pledged to do it over and over again until the annihilation of Israel.

"I am presenting this because I think this is a blow against democracy and the freedom of speech. I'm a big believer that America has to have the free expression of ideas to advance thinking."

Soon after Shipley removed the cartoon and replaced it with his editor's note, The Wall Street Journal reported Post Executive Editor Sally Buzbee alerted staff of the cartoon's removal "given the many deep concerns and conversations today in our newsroom."

Ramirez told the Free Beacon he "thought about quitting" after the paper's decision but decided to stay for the time being, saying that he "did not want it to appear that this cancel culture had succeeded in pushing me out of the job."

Ramirez joined the Post in May in an agreement that allows him to publish his cartoons in the Post and Las Vegas Review-Journal, where he has worked since 2018. The cartoon the Post pulled still appears on the Review-Journal's website. He said he plans to produce "a couple more cartoons" for the Post and "see what the landscape looks like" before determining "whether or not to continue this relationship."

"You don't have to be a mind-reading person to think that this was going to occur," Ramirez told the Free Beacon. "It just seems to be the way these newsrooms are politically designed."