A militant attends the funeral of a Palestinian Islamic Jihad gunman, who was killed by Israeli forces, in Jenin in the West Bank March 1, 2022. Photo: REUTERS/Raneen Sawafta

UK Jewish civil rights advocates denounced on Wednesday a cartoon published in The Independent which allegedly equated the cause of Ukrainian soldiers with Palestinian terrorists’ in Jenin, a West Bank city in which the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) launched security operations on Monday.

The illustration by cartoonist David Brown shows a mortally wounded Palestinian terrorist scrawling “Ukraine” in blood on a sign that had said “Jenin” while fighter planes fly over a bombed out area. “Can you see me now?” says a speech balloon drawn next his body.

“The award for the most intellectually unserious and morally obtuse political comparison of the year goes to…the Independent,” CAMERA UK, a media watchdog which identifies anti-Israel bias in news, tweeted on Wednesday.

Other Jewish rights group such as the Jewish Leadership Council, founded in 2003, told Jewish Chronicle, a UK Jewish newspaper based in London that Brown’s cartoon is “appalling” and a “clear attempt to deny Israel’s right to defend itself by casting a false equivalence between Ukrainians and armed Palestinian terrorists.”

Gary Mond, chairman of the National Jewish Association (NJA) told the paper, “Ukrainians are fighting because their territory has been invaded. They do not seek to destroy Russia and kill all Russians,” adding, “Palestinians are fighting to destroy the Jewish state and kill or expel the Jewish population. That is their stated goal.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.