In November, the NYU Langone Health hospital system fired one of its cancer researchers, Dr. Benjamin Neel, for reposting a series of anti-Hamas cartoons to his social media that were claimed to be offensive.
He's suing to get his job back.
The New York Times has written about this story at least twice. It described the cartoons in November:
Most of the social media posts at issue were reposts of political cartoons, according to the lawsuit. One of the cartoons takes aim at western defenders of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel. The cartoon shows a protest in which demonstrators are holding aloft signs justifying torture and rape. Another cartoon questions whether negotiating a two-state solution is viable with Hamas in power.
But it also said:
Dr. Neel had reposted a variety of anti-Hamas political cartoons, including two with offensive caricatures of Arab people.
Now, they are repeating that the cartoons are offensive:
[A] prominent cancer researcher in his 60s was outspoken in defense of Israel and had posted a variety of anti-Hamas political cartoons, including some with offensive caricatures of Arab people....Dr. Neel reposted political cartoons that included offensive depictions of Arabs and questioned whether negotiating a two-state solution was possible with Hamas.
Both of these were written by the same journalist, Joseph Goldstein.
The hospital system responded to the lawsuit with their own filing claiming that Dr. Neel “exercised extremely poor judgment by insidiously sharing racially and ethnically offensive posts on social media without regard for the potential impact on others.”
Are the cartoons really anti-Arab?
I found three of the cartoons that people complained about, claiming that these cartoons were "racist" and "anti-Arab" and "dehumanizing."
One of them was mine:
Another, like mine, made fun of Hamas' defenders from the progressive Left:
A third was a classic 2014 cartoon from Legal Insurrection's artist Branco:
I've already described why the criticisms of my cartoon are all lies. It is objectively true that Gazans raped Jewish girls - and not just Hamas members. Claiming that the cartoon is referring to every single Gazan is absurd. The signs people are holding are progressive justifications for heinous crimes, which were all over social media are are barely exaggerated.
The other two cartoons include caricatures of Hamas terrorists, not "Arabs." Branco's shows a man with a Hamas headband, the other is showing a Hamas terrorist on October 7.
Without publishing the cartoons so readers can decide for themselves, the New York Times is stating as unchallenged fact that these cartoons showing Hamas terrorists are really anti-Arab.
Anyone who looks at these cartoons and decides that they are anti-Arab are proving themselves to be the real racists. They, not the artists, are the ones who are saying that there is no distinction between violent, bloodthirsty terrorists and all Arabs.
