New York, NY, March 4, 2008 … Cartoonists at newspapers from Saudi Arabia to Bahrain unleashed yet another series of outrageous anti-Semitic cartoons criticizing Israel's actions in Gaza and comparing the situation of Palestinians in Gaza to the Holocaust.

Cartoons appearing in today's newspapers across the Arab Middle East portray Israelis and Jews as bloodthirsty Nazis -- repeating and deepening a false linkage to the Holocaust that the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) first reported on earlier this week.  The League has a Web page devoted to exposing this latest form of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish incitement in the Arab press.

"Once again, the Arab press has taken a no-holds-barred approach in their criticism of Israel, using the latest hostilities as an excuse to diminish and trivialize the Holocaust while depicting Israeli soldiers and Jews as cold-blooded Nazi killers," said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director.  "When it comes to the six million, there are no boundaries, there is no conscience for the Arab cartoonists, who cynically turn the Holocaust on those who suffered the most under Hitler's regime."

In a cartoon labeled, "The New Nazism," Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is portrayed as a modern-day Hitler (Al-Khabar, Algeria).  In another, Israeli soldiers raise a Nazi flag over Palestinian victims in Gaza, in a cartoon that borrows from the famous image of U.S. Marines at Imo Jima (Ad-Dustur, Jordan). A third carton borrows the triangle shaped symbol for recycling and repeatedly shifts from the Star of David to the Nazi swastika ("Recycling History," Al-Ayyam, Bahrain).

The Anti-Defamation League, founded in 1913, is the world's leading organization fighting anti-Semitism through programs and services that counteract hatred, prejudice and bigotry.