Cornell newspaper pulls artwork with Nazi symbols and Star of David

The student newspaper at Cornell University came under fire after it published artwork created by a professor featuring a bloodied Star of David and a Nazi “SS” symbol scrawled on the back of a Palestinian person.

The image, published in The Cornell Daily Sun, was later taken down. However, it was criticized by some as antisemitic, the New York Post reported.

“To me, it reflects the normalization of Holocaust inversion, both on the internet and now on Cornell’s campus,” said William Jacobson, a law professor who founded Legal Insurrection, told the newspaper.

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“This [SS lightning bolt] graphic is specifically inside a bloody Jewish star,” he added. “There’s no reflection of it being even related to Israel, and it clearly is pursuing the idea that Jews are the new Nazis. I think it’s obviously highly offensive.”

The drawing accompanied an opinion piece from Cornell professor Karim-Aly Kassam, who teaches courses on natural resources and Indigenous Studies at the Ithaca, New York campus. 

The piece, titled “Thousand & One Eyes for an Eye,” was published days after the second anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel by Hamas. In it, Kassam wrote that Israel was engaging in a revenge campaign in the Gaza Strip and described a pattern of Israeli officials describing Palestinians as “animals.”

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The student newspaper later retracted the piece and republished it without the drawing following an internal Sun discussion. The imagery failed to meet the newspaper’s standards, it said. 

“I am deeply saddened to learn that this portion of the artwork has been interpreted by some as antisemitic,” Kassam told The Post about the situation.

Julia Senzon, the editor-in-chief for The Sun, told Fox News Digital that Kassam provided the image to the publication.

“The Sun removed the image on the grounds that the imagery may plausibly cause visceral harm to some of our readers based on the historical context of the ‘SS’ symbol,” she said in a statement. 

An editor later defended Kassam in a column, arguing that the professor did “not imply that the state of Israel is equal to Nazi Germany.” The column reflected the editor’s views, not the newspaper. 

Fox News Digital has reached out to Kassam. The university declined to comment on the matter.