N.Z. Herald covers up reasons for sacking anti-Zionist cartoonist

[Resistance]

By John Braddock | World Socialist Web Site

New Zealand’s largest-circulation daily newspaper, the New Zealand Herald, last month broke a four-month silence over its sacking of cartoonist Malcolm Evans. Evans was dismissed in August following complaints from pro-Zionist lobbyists about his cartoons critical of Israel’s repression of the Palestinians.

Evans had worked for the Herald for seven years, during which time he was the paper’s chief political cartoonist. He was president of the New Zealand Cartoonists Association and twice named cartoonist of the year. Evans’ sacking followed his refusal to accept an edict by the paper’s editor-in-chief, Gavin Ellis, that he stop submitting items on Israel.

The cartoon that brought matters to a head was submitted in June, equating the situation in the West Bank with that of an apartheid regime. Evans had drawn the word “apartheid” as graffiti on a crumbling wall, replacing the second “a” with a Star of David. The cartoon simply depicted a political truth—the dispossession and confinement of an entire population pursued as a matter of official policy—in an appropriately graphic form.

The Evans case is not isolated. Recent years have seen a concerted international campaign by the political and media establishment, notably in the US and Britain, to intimidate and silence all opposition to Israeli policy by slandering as anti-Semite any political organisation, commentator, academic or student group that criticises the Sharon regime. This stifling of debate and outright political censorship has intensified in the context of the US-led “war on terror”

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See www.evanscartoons.com/dismissal.htm for more