The left-leaning newspaper Haaretz has once again been accused of offensive reporting on Haredim after one of its cartoonists singled them out over coronavirus.
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The controversial cartoon from Monday, drawn by Amos Biderman, showed the crowded Western Wall plaza during Tisha B'Av and two police officers discussing the threat of COVID-19 community spread. "Is it OK to have them in such close proximity to each other?," one officer asks, to which the second responds, "They got a special pass for Tisha B'Av."
— Amos Biderman (@Amos123Biderman) July 19, 2021
The paper and the cartoonist have since come under criticism for ignoring the data showing Haredim are not violating the social distancing rules more than the general population and in fact, Haredi towns and neighborhoods have seen relatively low morbidity in the latest wave.
Ishay Lapidot, a Haredi singer, took to Twitter to express his outrage. "When the government feels threatened, Haaretz and Biderman will always find a way to make fun of someone, even if that is based on lies and hatred that could be taken right out of Der Sturmer," he wrote.
Another journalist, Yishai Cohen from the Haredi news portal Kikar Hashabat, wrote: "What do you do when Haredim do not fit the narrative of a new wave of infections, and when Haredim are rarely seen on planes and when most of the community spread is actually within the secular world when the images from Ben-Gurion International Airport show the entire story and you cannot turn them into superspreaders with a long nose? You call up Amos Biderman."
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