The antisemitic cartoon of outgoing BBC chairman Richard Sharp published by The Guardian newspaper. Image: Screenshot

The British rabbi whose wife and daughters were murdered in an April 7 attack by Palestinian terrorists in the West Bank has issued a statement calling on The Guardian newspaper to fire the cartoonist responsible for an antisemitic caricature of the outgoing chairman of the BBC.

The offending image of Richard Sharp — showing him with a hooked nose and a sinister grin while holding a box labeled with the name of the Goldman Sachs investment bank, where he previously worked — was published last week and later withdrawn following a generalized outcry. In an apology, The Guardian noted that the “cartoon does not meet our editorial standards, and we have decided to remove it from our website. The Guardian apologizes to Mr Sharp, to the Jewish community and to anyone offended.” Separately, the cartoonist, Martin Rowson, described his creation as “a failure…on many levels: I offended the wrong people.” He said that “what I’m feeling now is enormous regret, idiocy and deep shame,” admitting that he was aware that Sharp was Jewish but that this “fact never crossed my mind as I drew him.”

In a statement emailed to journalists on Wednesday, Rabbi Leo Dee — whose wife, Lucy, and teenage daughters Rina and Maia were shot dead on April 7 as they traveled to their home in the West Bank settlement of Efrat — dismissed Rowson’s apology and urged The Guardian to fire him.

“Two and a half weeks ago I lost my beloved wife and two of our daughters to the vile evil of antisemitic, Palestinian Arab terror funded by the terror state of Iran,” Dee wrote.

He added that “today’s terror is rooted in such gratuitous antisemitic tropes as yesterday’s hateful media characterization & cartoons of Jewish people of which [pro-Nazi publicist Julius] Streicher and the Nazis would be proud.”

Pointing to the English Football Association’s commitment to zero-tolerance for racism, Dee argued: “It is not enough for the Guardian to have ‘withdrawn’ the odious and overtly antisemitic recent cartoon of recently resigned BBC chair Richard Sharp, nor for your cartoonist to have apologized — he needs to be sacked.”

He concluded: “For too long we have been oppressed by a pernicious strain of antisemitism in the media.”

Meanwhile, the Board of Deputies of British Jews, which represents the Jewish community in the UK, will be meeting in the coming days with the editor of The Guardian, Katherine Viner, to discuss its concerns.

In an article published on Wednesday, Guardian columnist Elisabeth Ribbans said she had “discussed the cartoon with Rowson and believe he did not mean to conjure antisemitic motifs, but the effect of his depiction of Sharp, alongside references to banking and the tentacles of the squid, inevitably recalled ghastly classic tropes of Jews holding money and power; and in particular the Nazi-era propaganda images of Jewish bankers.”

Ribbans emphasized that “including a pig in the context added to the offense, and it is no wonder readers complained forcefully.”