Netanyahu depicted as a dog is even more ominous than it seems

The story below did not happen in Mecca or Islamabad. It happened in Manhattan.

by Phyllis Chesler

Last night, my brother, who is legally blind, and who has a service dog, visited me. After dinner, when he called for a car service, I cautioned him to request someone who would accept a service dog. And so he did. Nevertheless, the dispatcher sent “Mahmoud” who absolutely refused to take the unclean, impure animal into his vehicle. 

My sightless brother, dog and all, was left on the street to call for another car. The driver was not apologetic. He was, rather, outraged, contemptuous, righteous.

Many years ago, a dear friend who also had a service dog, was treated similarly by a Muslim driver. She refused to get out of the car but luckily she called me. I begged her to get out and she finally did so. He might have taken her on a wild ride and dropped her off on the side of a highway. 

I am not talking about Mecca or Islamabad or Kabul. I am talking about Manhattan.

Of course, not all Muslims….are hateful towards dogs. (I personally know many Muslims who treasure their dogs). And not all Muslims are….terrorists. But all the taxi drivers who refuse to take dogs—thereby, knowingly breaking the law, are Muslims. I have never heard of a Hindu, a Sikh, a Christian, a Jew, a Buddhist, or a Zoroastrian driver who refused a service animal or who was so willing to break the law in order to obey some other kind of law, custom, habit, or to engage in such rude prejudice.

Thus, the abominable cartoon that the New York Times ran and which depicted Prime Minister Netanyahu as a dog is even more ominous than it seems. Muslims consider dogs to be impure, filthy, and they cannot come into contact with them. Dogs are not treasured pets. Dogs are not to be fed. They are to be left howling and starving in the streets—taunted, perhaps stoned by boys.

Cartoons all across the Nazi world and all across the Islamic world feature Jews as dogs, rats, octopuses, spiders—all creepy crawling things that must be exterminated.

And the New York Times simply had no idea that this was so. Do you really believe that? I don’t.

Listen: The Paper of Record has normalized Jew-hatred as fatefully as the United Nations has. They are the running dogs (so to speak) of this rapidly escalating surge of attacks on those who are visibly Jewish—not only in Europe or in Israel—but right here in America, in our synagogues and on our streets.

Alas, I laid it all out at the beginning of the 21st century, I wrote my little heart out, and kept doing so, only to be told that I was imagining danger where none exists—and by some of the very people who are now beginning to repeat my lines, including the one about anti-Zionism=anti-Semitism. My own editor attacked me for this one insight. And then the world had its way with me.

Please allow me to congratulate those who came out to demonstrate against the New York Times yesterday. But I must ask: Where were the large Jewish organizations, those under fifty, members of diverse congregations, and our non-Jewish allies?

And why has the Paper refused to name the editor or editors who chose to run this cartoon? And why have these people not been fired? 

And why do those who oppose genocide continue to advertise their wares in the New York Times? The advertisers should think carefully before doing so again.

Even if we had the “yellow vests” demonstrating day after day, I doubt the Times would change its Jew-hating culture. 

The question is: What will? And: Is it too late?

First published in Israel National News.