Cartoonist at Center of Post Hubbub: 'I Want an Open Debate'

The Washington Post may have belatedly not approved of his Hamas-themed editorial cartoon, but Michael Ramirez is now making the rounds to defend his work. The political cartoonist sat down with both CNN and Fox Digital to further explain the cartoon behind the commotion, which depicted a Hamas leader with "an exaggerated nose and heavily arched eyebrows" and young kids strapped to his body, reports the Daily Beast. The accompanying caption read: "How dare Israel attack civilians." Critics say the way the Hamas rep was drawn in the cartoon, which the Post ended up yanking, feeds into racist stereotypes, but the Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist is now pushing back on that.

For one, he tells CNN, the drawing was meant to refer to one senior Hamas person in particular: spokesman Ghazi Hamad. "The point of the cartoon is in its specificity," Ramirez said. He also told Fox that while "it's empirically true that Hamas uses civilians, both Palestinians and Israelis, as human shields," it's also true that individuals who say they support innocent Palestinian civilians "have a tendency to kind of erase the boundaries" when it comes to Hamas. Ramirez also said that David Shipley, the Post's opinions editor, had personally picked that cartoon out of a bunch Ramirez had offered.

Ramirez also showed CNN and Fox various cartoons he'd drawn of others with similarly exaggerated features, including former President Trump and Democratic Sen. John Fetterman. Although he's not happy about his cartoon being pulled, Ramirez told Fox he's glad it has gotten people talking about the "systematic undermining of the freedom of speech," noting, "I want an open debate. I think America is better, more extraordinary because of that." As for what comes next, Ramirez admits he mulled leaving the Post over this—his main gig is with the Las Vegas Review-Journal, which also ran the cartoon but didn't take it down—but ultimately decided against it. "If I quit, then the cancel culture people win," he told Fox. (More cartoonists stories.)