[HN] Steve Bell sacked by Guardian in antisemitism row over Netanyahu cartoon

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Long-serving Guardian cartoonist Steve Bell has been sacked by the newspaper in a row over a drawing he created of Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu.

Bell said the cartoon was spiked after a phone call from the paper suggested it may reference Shakespeare's Shylock's "pound of flesh" line.

Moneylender Shylock, from Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, is considered to be one of the most notorious Jewish stereotypes in English literature due to his greedy nature.

Bell told the BBC that the interpretation by the Guardian "made no sense to me, as there is no reference to that play in my cartoon, which shows Netanyahu, poised to perform a surgical operation on himself while wearing boxing gloves, the catastrophic consequences of which are yet to be seen.

The issue has arisen during a time of heightened tension following the Hamas attacks on Israel earlier this month and the subsequent retaliatory strikes on Gaza.

In the same year, senior Conservative MP Sajid Javid tweeted that Bell's cartoon - depicting former Home Secretary Priti Patel and ex-Prime Minister Boris Johnson as bulls with rings through their noses - was "incredibly offensive".

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