BERLIN (JTA) — A caricature of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in a German newspaper has drawn charges of anti-Semitism against the artist and newspaper.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center protested the depiction of Zuckerberg by artist Burkhard Mohr in the Suddeutsche Zeitungas daily Feb. 21 featuring the 29-year-old Jewish entrepreneur as an octopus reaching with its tentacles to control social media — a comment on Facebook’s acquisition of WhatsApp announced last week.
Mohr and Suddeutsche Zeitungas both apologized for the cartoon.
The exaggerated features include the stereotypically Jewish long hooked nose and thick lips. A leader of Germany’s Jewish community, Dieter Graumann, said the cartoon was on the level of Sturmer, the infamous Third Reich magazine, according to Tablet magazine.
Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Wiesenthal Center, told the Algemeiner newspaper that the cartoon was “an outrage” that proves the artist is anti-Semitic.
Mohr told The Jerusalem Post that he was shocked by the interpretation of his drawing and replaced the caricature of Zuckerberg’s face with a gaping maw.
In a message on Twitter, Suddeutsche Zeitungas wrote “We are sorry!”
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