The British newspaper The Guardian initially illustrated a Thursday article on rising antisemitism in the UK with a picture of Palestinian rioters on the Israel-Gaza Strip border.
The piece — titled “Antisemitic incidents in UK at record high for third year in a row” — dealt with new statistics on Jew-hatred in Britain.
The photograph first used for the article, however, showed Palestinians trying to breach the border fence on the Israel-Gaza frontier.
The photo choice was widely criticized on Twitter, with Jewish Chronicle journalist Daniel Sugarman calling it “undeniably stupid.”
“Because the tweet shows what the story is talking about — antisemitic incidents sharply rising in the UK — but with a picture of protests on the Gaza border, suggesting, to the casual eye, that the Guardian is implying UK Jews are to blame for that,” he said.
Short thread:
As you may have seen this morning, the Guardian published a piece on new CST figures showing a sharp rise in antisemitism here in the UK (for the third year in a row).
Except that they published it with this photo. pic.twitter.com/nC3pzUnSw6
— Daniel Sugarman is on holiday (@Daniel_Sugarman) February 7, 2019
Sugarman connected this to The Guardian’s general attitude toward Jews and Israel, noting, “Many of us have the strong sense that there are those at The Guardian who feel that unless UK Jews loudly denounce Israel, it is only natural they be blamed for what it does.”
The Guardian eventually changed the image to one of antisemitic graffiti. “The main photo on this article was changed to accurately reflect the story,” it appended to the end of the article.
