Buzbee forwarded an email that Shipley had sent opinions staff in which he said he had personally “taken down” the cartoon. Shipley included the full text of an editor’s note in which he publicly expressed “regret” that he had “missed something profound, and divisive” in publishing the image.

“A cartoon published by Michael Ramirez on the war in Gaza, a cartoon whose publication I approved, was seen by many readers as racist. This was not my intent. I saw the drawing as a caricature of a specific individual, the Hamas spokesperson, who celebrated the attacks on unarmed civilians in Israel,” Shipley wrote.

The cartoon depicted an individual, labeled “Hamas,” with children, a baby, and a woman strapped to his body. “How dare Israel attack civilians…,” the man said in a speech bubble.

[This is insane. It’s very clearly a caricature of Ghazi Hamad, who has made the rounds on US media to claim that Hamas didn’t target civilians on October 7 and doesn’t use human shields. The only way this could possibly be seen as ‘racist’ is if the newsroom and readership of the Washington Post has never heard about Hamad or seen a report on what he had to say. OH, WAIT …

Michael Ramirez is a national treasure. WaPo is trash. — Ed]