Jewish Groups Slam Norwegian Paper Over Gory Circumcision Cartoon

Norway's third largest newspaper Dagbladet raised the ire of Jewish groups after it published a cartoon with anti-Semitic tones vehemently criticizing the Jewish tradition of circumcision.

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The cartoon, published in Tuesday's paper, shows a child being cut to pieces, while his mother stands beside him holding a blood-drenched bible. The mother tells two police officers: "Abuse? No, it's tradition, an important part of our beliefs." To which the officers answer "Beliefs? Oh, that's alright."

Behind the child is a mohel, an officiator of Jewish circumcision, holding a bible and stabbing the child in the head with a trident.

"The Simon Wiesenthal Center denounces the blood libel cartoon published in Dagbladet, so virulently anti-Semitic it would make Hitler and Himmler weep tears of joy,” said rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, who is currently in Israel participating in the Global Forum for Combating Antisemitism, which is currently assembled in Jerusalem.

”We call upon Norway’s leaders to denounce this incitement," he added.

“This cartoon has crossed all lines of decency and is dripping with hate and Antisemitism,” Dr. Moshe Kantor, President of the European Jewish Congress, said. “We are now studying the possibility that this legally constitutes incitement and even a hate-crime and will therefore require legal action. This cartoon has ticked off one by one all the major historical anti-Semitic motifs, the type of which incited attacks and even the mass murder of Jews in the past."

“The reason we have laws against hate is because modern society understands the connection between incitement and violence,” he said.

Open gallery view

The Dagbladet cartoon.