Group protests cartoon

Friday, April 13, 2001 | 10:22 a.m.

SUN STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS

LOS ANGELES -- A Jewish human rights group on Thursday denounced a forthcoming "B.C." cartoon as anti-Semitic and called upon the 1,300 newspapers that run the strip, including the Las Vegas Sun, to either withhold its publication or editorialize against it.

The cartoon, slated to run on Easter, shows a lighted menorah with the last words uttered by Jesus printed above it. With each successive panel, one of the menorah's flames is snuffed, leaving at the end a cross standing in place of the seven-branched candlestick.

Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean and founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said the cartoon strip was an attack on Judaism.

"It's basically saying the Jewish people will not exist -- they will be consumed by Christianity and they will not exist," Hier said. "All the bad things that have occurred -- the pogroms, the blood libels, all started from misunderstandings and attacks like this."

In a statement, Johnny Hart, the artist who draws the often Christian-themed cartoon, said the purpose of the Easter strip was to honor both Christianity and Judaism alike.

"I regret if some people misunderstood the strip, and it hurt their feelings. I abhor the so-called 'Replacement Theology.' This is a holy week for both Christians and Jews, and my intent, as always, was to pay tribute to both," Hart said.

Hier dismissed that, saying the implication of the strip was that the one faith would replace the other.

"That is not the way you pay tribute to two great religions on Easter Sunday. You don't pay tribute by extinguishing one of them," Hier said by telephone from Phoenix, where he had learned of the strip when the editor of a local Jewish newspaper showed it to him.

The decision to run or pull cartoons published in the combined Sunday newspaper is made by the Las Vegas Review-Journal under a joint operating agreement.

"I'm sure this cartoon was already in print long before this complaint arose," Sun Executive Editor Mike O'Callaghan said.

"I celebrate Easter Sunday as a time of peace and tranquility with fresh hope for a better world," O'Callaghan, a Catholic, said.

"This is not a day we should allow an insensitive cartoon to create pain for people of other religious beliefs," he said.

Tim McGuire, editor of the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune and American Society of Newspaper Editors president, said it would be improper for any newspaper to pull the strip.

"Whenever you get into doing that you are going to offend other people. It's best to let it go and let the debate take place," McGuire said. "The rabbi is engaging in debate and that is perfectly OK and acceptable. If you pulled it, people of the Christian faith would argue you were treating them unfairly."