THE RETRACTION THE NEW YORK TIMES SHOULD HAVE WRITTEN:

‘We ran a blatantly anti-Semitic cartoon. At a time when anti-Jewish violence and incitement is at levels not seen since 1945, we chose to place gutter racism on our pages. We did this because plenty of our editors share the prejudice of this cartoon; if in doubt, look at our unsigned editorials.

‘We’re so soaked in this that none of us thought that it might be an error to publish a cartoon with clear precursors in fascist, communist, Arab nationalist and Islamist propaganda. Rather than explain this away in the passive tense, we’re going to name the editors who signed off on this cartoon, and fire them.’

“Of course, the Times will do none of this. There won’t be a comparative demonstration of why this kind of imagery is so obnoxious, because the Times is histrionically sensitive to giving offense to any group except the groups that it identifies as objects of contempt: Republicans, white Southerners, Easter worshippers, people who like Brexit, and ‘Zionists’, a euphemism which one recent survey counted as 92 percent of American Jews. Nor will there be any kind of acknowledgment that the publication of this cartoon reflects the unexamined moral rot of the left in Europe and the United States, in which anti-Semitism and conspiracy theories, whether about Jews or Russian ‘collusion’, play so central a role.”