Rupert Murdoch’s Times is among the UK newspapers people trust the most. But it doesn’t deserve this reputation. Because it might as well enlist Israel’s war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu to produce its propaganda, as a new cartoon for the paper demonstrates.
Propaganda behalf of Israel’s genocidal ultra-nationalist regime
Israel is illegally occupying Palestinian territories, according to the International Court of Justice. The occupiers have brutally controlled these lands for many decades now, through a system of apartheid.
Gaza in particular has long received the nickname of ‘world’s largest open-air prison‘, and Jewish academic Norman Finkelstein has even called it a concentration camp. Yet when people in Gaza fought back on 7 October 2023, the Western mainstream media omitted this essential context. And they’ve consistently tried to downplay the genocide that Israeli occupation forces have inflicted on Gaza in response.
The latest propaganda cartoon from the Times fits in well with a longstanding establishment tradition of minimising the suffering of Palestinian people living (and dying) under Israeli occupation while racistly prioritising and emphasising the suffering of Israeli citizens when Palestinians fight back. Because it decided to degrade itself by disrespecting the memory of Holocaust victims in the service of Israel’s ultra-nationalist settler-colonial regime.
Far from comparing the genocide of Jewish people in the Holocaust to the genocide of Palestinian people in Gaza today, which many would argue is a fair comparison, the Times instead compared Jewish concentration camp captives to released Israeli hostages. Not a thought for the thousands of Palestinian hostages. Not a thought for the thousands of children Israel has murdered since 2023.
Independent cartoonist Carlos Latuff, however, set the Times straight with a cartoon comparison of his own:
This one is more realistic. https://t.co/8sB8oieLIU pic.twitter.com/0GWjn1lR8v
— Carlos Latuff (@LatuffCartoons) February 10, 2025
War criminals in Israel may hate them, but there are numerous comparisons that Jewish commentators and others have legitimately made between German ultra-nationalists in the Holocaust and Israeli ultra-nationalists today.
Boycott all of the Murdoch press
Whether it’s the Times, the Sun, Talk, or any other media Murdoch’s News UK owns, we need to boycott the propaganda. Because as journalist and author Alan MacLeod wrote at Mint Press News in 2024:
no one is as important in manufacturing consent for Israel as Rupert Murdoch
The billionaire media mogul, MacLeod added:
has close and extensive personal ties to the Israeli political elite and myriad business connections to the country
War criminal prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly “has long-standing relations” with Murdoch and his family. And Macleod insisted that Murdoch and his media outlets function are
an unofficial arm of the Israeli propaganda machine
In Britain in particular, Murdoch has had close links to figures working with pro-Israel lobby group “Labour Friends of Israel, which was crucial in smearing and defeating the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn”.
“Never again” must mean NEVER AGAIN FOR ANYONE
A decade before the current genocide in Gaza, back in 2014, a number of Holocaust survivors and their descendants insisted on the similarities between the Nazi Holocaust and Israel’s actions in Palestine. They wrote that:
We are alarmed by the extreme, racist dehumanization of Palestinians in Israeli society, which has reached a fever-pitch. In Israel, politicians and pundits in The Times of Israel and The Jerusalem Post have called openly for genocide of Palestinians and right-wing Israelis are adopting Neo-Nazi insignia…
And they insisted that the phrase “never again” must not be selective. It must apply to everyone, or it’s meaningless.
We must raise our collective voices and use our collective power to bring about an end to all forms of racism, including the ongoing genocide of Palestinian people. We call for an immediate end to the siege against and blockade of Gaza. We call for the full economic, cultural and academic boycott of Israel. “Never again” must mean NEVER AGAIN FOR ANYONE!
Featured image via screengrab
