Guardian sacks Steve Bell cartoonist who worked at the newspaper for more than 40 years, because of Benjamin Netanyahu’s anti-Semitic sketch.

The caption reads “People of Gaza, leave now” – a reference to Israel which tells the Palestinians to flee to the south immediately before an expected ground invasion.

Critics said that the picture essentially refers to Shylock, the Jewish usurer from Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, who insists on “pound of flesh” owed to him by the merchant Antonio. Bell, told the Jewish Chronicle that the newspaper now refuses to print his work. He defended the Netanyahu cartoon, saying that “it’s about specifically catastrophic failure of Benjamin Netanyahu’s policies that directly led to the horrific recent atrocities surrounding Gaza and his response, in which he used his actual words when addressing the citizens of Gaza,”

“The Guardian has every right not to publish my cartoon if it chooses, but it must not do so using completely fabricated and false reasons. All it does is hinder the conversation about a terrible, but important subject.”

Bell will remain with the paper until April 2024. The newspaper replied that “The decision has been made not to renew Steve Bell’s contract. Steve Bell’s designs have been an important part of the Guardian for the past 40 years – we thank him and wish him all the best.”