Chinese embassy tweets and deletes antisemitic cartoon

The Chinese Embassy in Japan tweeted an antisemitic cartoon, which it eventually deleted at the behest of Israel’s Foreign Ministry.The cartoon, posted on Thursday night, featured an image of the Grim Reaper wearing an American flag and carrying a scythe with the Israeli flag and its prominently-featured Star of David on it. The Reaper goes from door to door leaving a bloody trail behind him. The doors are labeled Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Egypt.The tweet in Japanese reads: “If the United States brought ‘democracy,’ it would be like this.”Israeli Ambassador to Japan Yaffa Ben-Ari reached out to her Chinese counterpart Cheng Yonghua on Friday, and pointed out that the cartoon demonizes Israel.The Chinese ambassador said he did not notice that Israel was part of the image.At the same time, Foreign Ministry Deputy Director-General for Asia and the Pacific Gilad Cohen contacted the Chinese Embassy in Israel.Within an hour of Ben-Ari and Cohen’s calls, the tweet was deleted, but the embassy did not tweet an apology.

Many Japanese Twitter users responded angrily to the tweet, including with the famous photo of a man standing in front of a tank in Tiananmen Square, but did not seem to notice or take issue with the antisemitic element, Hong-Kong-based South China Morning Post reported.
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